Dustin Hoffman calls filming The Graduate a terrible experience, recalling 27 takes of a slap scene

A terrible experience, in his own words

Dustin Hoffman, 89, has described making The Graduate as a terrible experience in an essay for The New Yorker, which The Independent says is an extract from his autobiography Look at Me. The 1967 film made him a star, but in the essay he says he felt out of place on it from the outset. He writes that he felt immediately uncomfortable and unworthy, even though he was playing the lead in a film by a director who was then at the height of his career.

“It was a terrible experience making the movie that changed my life.”

Doubts about the casting

Hoffman says his agent told him that Mike Nichols was interested in him, and at first he did not want to audition at all. He had read the Charles Webb novel that Nichols was adapting and concluded that he was wrong for Benjamin Braddock, an affluent all-American college graduate in the book. He also questions why a director would cast a man with his appearance as the ultimate WASP, and says it made no sense. His agent persuaded him to go to the audition, and he won the part. El País reports that Hoffman was 30 when the film came out, while the character is a 21-year-old recent graduate.

Tension with the director

According to Hoffman, Nichols was often grumpy on set, a sharp contrast with his mood during rehearsals. Hoffman says he often felt on the verge of being fired. He also describes a certain sadism that seemed to surface toward him in particular, although the director was irritable with everyone. During some of the film's best-known sequences, Hoffman says, he thought he had no idea what he was doing. The Independent notes that Nichols died in 2014.

The 27-take slap scene

The most detailed episode in the essay concerns a scene in which Katharine Ross had to slap Hoffman. He writes that Nichols had the take repeated 27 times. In the scene, Benjamin runs into Elaine's room soaked from the rain to confess an affair with an older woman, and the slap was ultimately not used in the film. Hoffman says he told Ross not to hit his ear, and that she missed a few times.

“There was a scene in which Katharine Ross had to slap me, and he made us do 27 takes”

A Telegraaf report of the essay says he felt dizzy at the end of that day, and that a day later his eardrum was found to be pierced. The essay's account of the shoot is Hoffman's own recollection, and no other source in the cluster confirms the injury.

Recognition afterwards

Telegraaf reports that The Graduate was nominated for seven Oscars and won the prize for best picture at the 40th Academy Awards. Hoffman later won the best actor Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer in 1980 and for Rain Man in 1989, El País notes. The essay appeared in The New Yorker on 31 October, almost 60 years after the film's release, according to El País. Hoffman's account of the shoot is the story's main thread, and its details come from the essay rather than from any independent report.