The iconic 1980s action hero almost played by Dustin Hoffman: “I was the first one to be asked”
He might be one of the greatest actors of his generation, and quite possibly one of the greatest actors of all time, but one thing Dustin Hoffman never was and never will be is an action hero.
No offence intended to the little fella, but he made his name by being a bit of a dweeb. He was frequently cast as introverted, neurotic characters who kept themselves to themselves until they couldn’t any longer, and you can’t exactly imagine him getting buffed, jacked, and gunning down disposable henchmen.
In fact, at no point in his long and distinguished career has Hoffman ever been in an action flick. He’s made a few thrillers, he’s popped up in a couple of fantasy films, and he’s even dabbled in a little sci-fi here and there, but shootouts, explosions, punch-ups, and bulging biceps have never been a factor.
Despite that, he was at the very top of the wish-list to bring a character to life who would eventually become known as one of the industry’s most iconic action heroes. Give him a vest and a red headband, and you could easily imagine him as John Rambo, right? Of course you couldn’t, that’s fucking ridiculous.
While First Blood was a smaller-scale, contained thriller that saw Sylvester Stallone’s protagonist kill precisely one person, and that was by accident, the sequels increasingly upped the ante, and by the time the franchise drew to a close with 2019’s Last Blood, Rambo had literally dropped hundreds of bodies.
He’d shot them, stabbed them, blown them up, slit their throats, turned them into paste with a vehicle-mounted machine gun, impaled them with arrows, and almost everything between, and under absolutely no circumstances could anyone picture the Academy Award-winning star of The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, and Kramer vs Kramer doing any of that.
Still, when First Blood initially entered development in the late 1970s, it could have been him. “I was the first one asked to do Rambo,” Hoffman revealed. “But it was a little too much violence.” If that’s how he felt about the first one, then you can only imagine how he would have felt about the other four.
Stallone was absolutely nowhere near the first pick, either, with everyone from Al Pacino and Burt Reynolds to James Caan and Paul Newman turning it down, and even when he did get the job, he was convinced it would be the end of his career. It wasn’t, and it wasn’t the last time Sly felt that way, with Rambo having the opposite effect and doubling up alongside Rocky to make him a superstar.
As good as Hoffman is, Rambo? We can’t see it. At least he felt the same way, and knowing how the series turned out, it’s enough to make you wonder what it would have looked like to see the diminutive legend ripping some poor soldier’s throat out with his bare hands.
