Showbiz is in Dustin Hoffman’s blood. His
father worked at Columbia Studios in props
and set dressing before shifting to furniture
design, where he launched his own short-lived
store, Harry Hoffman Furniture Company. His
mother, Lillian, was a former jazz pianist and set him
up with a piano and a teacher at the age of five.

But,
before Hoffman hit the silver screen, the Los Angeles
native harboured dreams of becoming a jazz musician
while studying piano. He gave up music in his late
teens to try something else. Something like, let’s say,
janitor, attendant at a psychiatric institution, demonstrator
in Macy’s toy department, dishwasher, typist,
waiter, director, producer, writer and, of course, actor.
With two Oscars, five Golden Globes and a Cecil B.
DeMille award bestowed upon him by the Hollywood
Foreign Press, there’s no doubt about actor.

Did we
mention husband, father of six and grandfather of
three?

Up next, Hoffman’s signed to play the belligerent
patriarch Izzy in the Toronto-based Serendipity
Point Films’ adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s Barney’s
Version, alongside Paul Giamatti, and may also reprise
his Meet the Fockers role. His latest movie, Last Chance
Harvey, out now on DVD, explores a lonely, long-divorced
New Yorker who travels to England for his
distant daughter’s wedding, only to be greeted as an
outsider. Through a series of snafus, he meets and falls
for a 50-something airport employee, played by Emma
Thompson, proving it’s never to late to find love.

Dagmar Dunlevy: Society through media, film
and television tends to depict that falling in love
doesn’t seem to happen for people over a certain age.
Does love really change, become different, deeper?

Dustin Hoffman: Well, you can wait more than
24 hours to jump in the sack, I guess, be more patient.
(smiling) The value of courtship increases. Maybe it’s
not true in Europe. They have more romantic films
with people over 30, don’t they? The old days with
Romy Schneider and Yves Montand, doesn’t that still
exist? It’s here in this youth-obsessed culture … [where
it's not the case]. They don’t see any money in it, but
they should take another look because, from what I
understand, for the first time the majority of the audience
is over 40 now.

DD: Your co-star, Emma Thompson, said she fell semi-in
love with you. She did add, however, that she didn’t
want to live with you. What are you like to live with?

DH: A handful! (grinning) First of all, I don’t want to
live with her. We’re creatively married. We met on
Stranger Than Fiction, and that’s why we wanted to
work together again. It’s an extraordinary feeling when
we work with each other. Marriage should be that easy.
It reminds me of when I started studying acting in
New York at 21. I was on what was called a work scholarship,
which meant I cleaned the toilets and they gave
me free acting classes. The other person on a scholarship
was Barbra Streisand, so that’s when we met. Barbra and I never really became friends,
and years would pass and we’d bump into
each other, never really socializing, just
seeing each other. Then, finally, we’re going
to work on Meet the Fockers, and I said
to Barbra on the first day of shooting:
“Why didn’t we ever get married?” She
looked at me without missing a beat and
said, “Because we would have killed each
other!” (laughs) I think a law should be
passed in terms of actors: they should not
be allowed to marry. You need one alpha
and one beta, not two alphas. But it’s hard
to be objective when you’re eternally subjective.
My kids tell me that when I did Fockers,
that that was the first time I acted the
way I do at home! So, if you want to be
married to that … (smiling)

DD: You have a passion for jazz.

DH: My father had a great love for it, and
I remember listening to it a lot. A piano
was put in front of me when I was about
five. I don’t remember being asked, but my
parents decided I was going to be a concert
pianist. It is every Jewish family’s dream;
you’re going to play Carnegie Hall!’ (smiling)
I practised hard. I was going down
twice a week to study at the Los Angeles
Conservatory of Music but grew more distant
from classical music. By the time I got
into high school, it was the ’50s, and jazz,
modern jazz, well, I fell in love with it.

DD: So what happened?

DH: I was in a band, and I was the worst
one. I realized I was going to have a hard
time because what the other guys in the
band could do instinctively, I had to work
very hard at. I was a bad student, [but] I
started college as a so-called music major. I
dropped out and took an acting class. I felt
I would rather fail at acting than at music.
I was sure I was going to fail, either way,
but it was less painful to act than to sit at
the piano. I didn’t like being alone. When
you practise, it’s a hard thing. It’s just you
and the piano. When you’re acting, at least
you’re rehearsing with other people.

DD: There’s a theme of loneliness in Last
Chance. How do you deal with loneliness?

DH: Wow! Is there a difference between
being alone and being lonely? Yes. You can
be lonely with people around. You can be
lonely with the wrong person. At my stage,
the best way I’ve found to deal with anything
is to get as close to the truth as I can,
and that clich�, the truth will free you, to
find out why and the why is really hard –
and then it’s not hard because when you
finally find the answer to your own question,
it was right in front of your face all
the time, and you just didn’t want to see it.
Lonely? I don’t know if you have a choice.

DD: You also wrote the tune you were
playing at the piano in the film.

DH: I wrote it in my 20s, about the first girl
that ever left me. It was in summer stock.
We were going steady, and I thought I was
going to marry her. We had the same acting
teacher. The basement of the stage was
where the actors would hang out because
there was a piano there. I got there early,
and there in the corner was my girlfriend,
necking with my acting teacher! Classic.
The song came out of that. Years passed,
and Bette Midler asked me to be on her TV
special. The song that I wrote came up, and
I played it for her and she said she would
write the lyrics. We did that on the show.
Then Sting heard it, and he sang it while I
played it at Carnegie Hall. My parents were
dead by that point. They would have seen
me play Carnegie Hall at Sting’s Rain Forest
Benefit! It was a great thrill for me. It’s a
good song. It’s called “Shoot the Breeze.”

DD: In this, you’re finally in a romantic
boy-meets-girl type of film. Was your staying
away from those roles intentional?

DH: Is that a clich� of the way people are
leading men or leading ladies? I guess I always
ran from trying to be that. I took a
road less travelled, maybe in the sense that
I was a character first and then let that lead
to being a leading man, if the part called
for it. But I never thought of myself as a
leading man. Mike Nichols certainly didn’t
when he cast me in The Graduate. He was
roundly scolded by people. How could
you cast him? He’s not a leading man! So
I guess it all started with him, and now,
suddenly, Emma and I, we looked at each
other, and we say we played these so-called
character roles most of our lives.

DD: You were making films in the ’50s,
’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and now the ’00s. If
you had the power to revisit any of those
decades …

DH: Right now, right now. I’m closer to
myself now than I’ve ever been before. I’m
loosening the demons that I have not ever
been able to loosen. Ultimately, there’s two
periods in your life. We like to call them
three acts: youth, middle age and old age,
but I think there’s only two. There’s one
where we’re lucky enough to have our
faculties, if you will, and then there’s that
catastrophic event that happens to all of
us, you know, knock on wood, where
whatever that physical thing that happens
that alters us and how we deal with it. I like
life now, and I’m fortunate that that event
hasn’t struck me yet. I’m at that little window
of time where I feel like I finally found
the first act of myself. Even if you’re lucky
to have a career, family, money, there are
crises that are lurking in all of us that I just
feel that I am feeling. The hardest thing for
many of us to feel is that we deserve a life.

DD: Speaking of life and the DVD, you’ve
had your father-of-the-bride experiences.

DH: I was a father of the bride three times.
The last one was my daughter Jenna, and
that was quite wonderful. She married an
Irishman, Seamus Culligan, no less, and I
surprised them by getting Irish music for
the event. I was trying to think of the closest
thing to it, so I got a Scot to do the bagpipes
and lead them out to the ceremony
and back. It was memorable. (laughing)

DD: Can you share any memories from
your own wedding?

DH: With my wife, Lisa [of nearly 30 years].
All her father gave me was a used Toyota in
terms of a dowry. I’ve not forgiven him for
that. It’s not funny! (smiling)

– Dagmar Dunlevy