No stranger to disguise, Dustin Hoffman – who 30 years ago dressed in drag for Tootsie – cloaked himself in secrecy to hide an unforgiving disease that almost claimed his life.
In 2013, the Rain Man actor – 75 at the time – revealed he secretly underwent treatment for throat cancer, which was “surgically cured,” but he never spoke of it again.
In 1967, a 30-year-old Dustin Hoffman had his breakthrough role in the romantic comedy The Graduate, a film that earned the actor his first Oscar nomination.
Over the next several years, Hoffman appeared in classic films like All the President’s Men (1976) and 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer, where he took home an Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 1983, the California-born man then starred in the film Tootsie, where he played a dried-up actor who dresses up as a woman to land a role on a soap opera.
The hit film, where in drag he was being called a “nottie” instead of a “hottie,” brought him to tears, he said.
“If I was going to be a woman, I would want to be as beautiful as possible, and they said to me, ‘That’s as good as it gets.’ Uh, that’s as beautiful as we can get you,” Hoffman recalled in an interview.
When he heard that he wasn’t very pretty, the now 86-year-old man had an epiphany, forever changing how he treats women.
Xem bài viết này trên Instagram
“I went home and started crying,” Hoffman says. “I think I’m an interesting woman, when I look at myself on-screen, and I know that if I met myself at a party I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think women have to have in order for us to ask them out.”
Though the comedy was the second highest grossing film of that year – E.T. The Extraterrestrial landed the top spot – Hoffman didn’t think it was funny.
He adds: “…that was never a comedy for me.”
But Hoffman became one of Hollywood’s most sought-after actors.
12Related Posts
On Our Wedding Night, My Husband Struck Me for Helping His Injured Mother While His Entire Family Watched in Silence—So I Took Her to the Hospital Alone. Before Dawn, She Revealed Why He Had Really Married Me… Then an Auditor Found an $8 Million Secret His Family Had Buried for 15 Years
Part 1 of 3The Wedding Night That Opened Every Locked Door By the time Ethan Whitmore struck me across the face, the last guests had been gone for...
My Nine-Year-Old Son Was Rushed to the Hospital from His Best Friend’s House. Two Police Officers Stopped Me from Entering His Room. Ten Minutes Later, My Husband Walked Out Looking Relieved, and That Night My Son Whispered, “Mom, Look at My Phone”
Part 1 of 3 The Call That Changed Everything I still remember the exact words the police officer said. “Mrs. Hollis, I think you should wait here for...
Everyone Accused My Seven-Year-Old Daughter Of Attacking A Wealthy Classmate, And Two Officers Arrived To Take Her Away—But Minutes Later, The Boy’s Surgeon Father Knelt Before Her In The Hospital Waiting Room And Revealed The Truth Nobody Had Expected
Part 1 of 3 The Day Everyone Believed My Daughter Had Done Something Terrible The first thing I noticed when I stepped into the principal’s office was the...
“You Have No Money, No Career, and Nowhere to Go,” My Husband Sneered After His “Business Adviser” Hurt Our Six-Year-Old and He Chose to Look Away—Hours Later, at Portland’s Most Exclusive Gala, Our Daughter Ran Straight to the Man Who Controlled His Company’s Future, and One Trembling Gesture Turned His Most Important Night Into the Reckoning He Never Saw Coming
Part 1 of 3The House That Taught Me to Be Quiet For seven years, I believed silence was the price of keeping a family together. That belief ended...
My Husband Locked Me in Our Freezing Mountain House at 38 Weeks Pregnant and Left With His Mother for a 14-Day Luxury Cruise—Paid for With My Money. Two Weeks Later, They Returned Tanned and Smiling… But When the Door Opened, a Huge Bearded Stranger and His Growling Dog Were Standing Inside
Part 1 of 3The Morning They Chose the Vacation The morning my marriage finally revealed itself for what it was, snow had already begun collecting along the cedar...