Make Page Six a Preferred Source Dustin Hoffman was a huge star after “The Graduate” came out — but he was also broke.
The Oscar winner revealed in his memoir, “Look At Me,” that his life was “surreal” after the movie’s 1967 release.
“I couldn’t go out in the street without people coming up to touch me and ask for my autograph,” he wrote, “but I was still basically broke.”
The “Rain Man” actor, 89, said that he “only took home $3,000 after I paid all my expenses, believe it or not,” and even “had to pay my own way to L.A. for the shoot.”
When money ran out, Hoffman went on unemployment, but a photo of him at the unemployment office ran in Life magazine, “and I could never go back in there again. I was embarrassed by the dirty looks from other people standing in line who needed the money and assumed I didn’t.”
Hoffman also recalled having a “terrible” experience making the movie, largely because of director Mike Nichols, who he said became “an entirely different person” once filming began.
“The whole time, I felt Mike was angry at me, either because I was doing something wrong or because he had realized what everybody else already knew, that he had miscast the lead in his film,” he recalled.
“His mood would shift dramatically. I don’t remember the scene, but I will never forget Mike’s acid voice saying to me, after one take: ‘What were you doing?’ … Do the opposite of that.’”
Despite the behind-the-scenes tension, the film — which follows Hoffman’s character as he embarks on an affair with family friend Mrs. Robinson, played by Anne Bancroft — went on to become a classic.
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Nichols won the Oscar for best director in 1968, while Hoffman and Bancroft both earned acting nominations.
Hoffman also shared a note Nichols sent him on Aug. 21, 1967, in which the director praised his work on the film.
“You should be very pleased. You worked very hard and very well and I think it’s all going to be alright,” the “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” director wrote.
“If Mike Nichols hadn’t cast me in that movie,” Hoffman noted, “I would have had a completely different life.”
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