Professional Actor Dustin Hoffman

Added: 11/30/2007

Dustin Hoffman is known for a lot of roles he has played throughout his career and most of them are roles we all know. Dustin Hoffman as Rainman or Dustin Hoffman as Tootsie are all famous movie roles that many of us know and will never forget. But Dustin Hoffman did not get his start in the traditional way and a lot of the things he did early in his career are things you would not expect. At least not from Dustin Hoffman.

Dustin Hoffman was born in Los Angeles, California on August 8, 1937. When you see him in recent movies like the 2004 Meet The Fockers the last thing you think when you look at him is here is a man that is almost 70 years old. But at 70 years old Dustin Hoffman is more active now than most actors twice his age and he has productions ready to be released in 2008 and is in negotiations for productions set to release in 2009 and later. He is a consummate professional when it comes to acting and he takes his craft very seriously which is a far cry from where he started when he decided to get into acting back in 1955. He has many friends in the acting profession that he has known for years like Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall. Dustin Hoffman has been nominated for an Oscar 7 times and has won the prestigious statue twice. He has been in mega hit block busters and he has taken on roles that no one else would take and made them successful. He has played a reporter and a down and out actor in drag. He has been an award winning actor over 20 times and has been nominated for awards over 60 times. To top all of that off he has played in some of the most famous roles that have ever appeared on a Hollywood screen and many would argue that it was Dustin Hoffman's performance that made those roles so memorable. He was almost Michael Corleone and his decision to not play Gandhi came back to haunt him later that year. To think that it all started because he didn't want a regular job.

Dustin Hoffman barely graduated from high school in 1955 and later that year he enrolled in Santa Monica College. He took an acting class in college because someone told him that no one ever fails an acting class in Santa Monica College. It turns out that acting was the only class he did not fail at Santa Monica College and Dustin Hoffman was kicked out of college after one year for bad grades. During that time he also received some acting training at the Los Angeles Conservatory Of Music that would help him out later in life. After getting kicked out of college in 1956 Dustin Hoffman decided that he really did not want to get a job and he did not want to go into the military either. So he signed up with the Pasadena Playhouse for two years and began his career as an actor. Now he could pursue the career that he wanted which would keep him from working or joining the army.

Dustin Hoffman barely made a living for years and he was starting to win small television roles but none of it was enough to keep him going. He scrapped along as best he could until in 1967 he got his first real role in a movie called The Graduate. He was 30 years old playing a kid that just graduated from high school but his very boyish looks helped him pull it off. He was nominated for an Oscar for The Graduate and from there his career took off. He took roles that no one else wanted and sometimes he regretted that a little. For the 1983 movie Gandhi Dustin Hoffman was being considered for the lead but decided instead to play the lead in the controversial movie Tootsie. He lost the Oscar that year to Ben Kingsley who played the lead in Gandhi. But for the rest of his career Dustin Hoffman would continue to be Dustin Hoffman.

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