When Laurence Olivier owned Dustin Hoffman: “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”
Laurence Olivier is widely regarded as one of, if not the greatest actor to have ever taken to the stage. The iconic thespian is often cited as a master of the boards, able to command an audience and conjure emotions like nobody else before or since. The top English theatre awards are named after him, for crying out loud. If that doesn’t prove how good he was, nothing will.
Though best known for his work on stage, Olivier did also have a very successful film career. His most famous silver screen appearances include Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights, and an array of Shakespeare adaptations. One of his later film roles was in Marathon Man, which came out in 1977. The story follows Thomas ‘Babe’ Levy, played by Dustin Hoffman, a young man with a running obsession living in New York City. He becomes embroiled in a criminal scheme as a result of his brother (Roy Scheider), which leads him to an encounter with a former Nazi war criminal, played by none other than Sir Laurence.
For his portrayal of Dr Christian Szell, Olivier was nominated for an Oscar – one of 11 nods he would receive from the Academy across his career – and won ‘Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture’ at the Golden Globes. That’s not what this movie is most famous for, however. That would be a legendary confrontation between Olivier and Hoffman driven by a clash in acting philosophies.
At the time, Hoffman was a fierce proponent of method acting. He’d picked up the controversial technique while studying at the famous Actors Studio in New York. The school had been founded by members of the Group Theatre – including On the Waterfront director Elia Kazan – who had all been early proponents of Konstantin Stanislavski’s teachings. As for Olivier, a classical actor through and through, he despised method. In his autobiography, On Acting, he wrote, “Have Stanislavski with you in your study or in your limousine… but don’t bring him onto the film set.”
Olivier, who had already had a famous argument with heated rival Marilyn Monroe over the practice, must have known that a confrontation with Hoffman was inevitable when they both signed on to Marathon Man. For a scene in which his character had been awake for three days in a row, Hoffman allegedly attempted the same thing to fully understand his state. As written in The Guardian, this sparked a heated discussion between the co-stars. This is when Olivier delivered one of the greatest comebacks of all time. When Hoffman started defending his actions, the Englishman simply replied, “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”
What do you say to that? With one sentence, Olivier completely dismantled decades of theory and practice and firmly put Hoffman in his place. According to the Rain Man star, this was said more as a joke, and the line has been blown way out of proportion, but that’s precisely what you would say if you’d been humbled by one of the greats. He also claims that he had stayed awake for so long for ‘social reasons’, for what it’s worth.
Over half a century after this legendary line, the debate about method acting continues to rage. Both Olivier and Hoffman are great performers, making valid cases for both schools of thought, but when it comes to this particular instance, the former knocked the latter out with a single verbal blow.
