In “Marathon Man” for a scene in which his character had been awake for three days in a row, Dustin Hoffman allegedly attempted the same thing to fully understand his state.
As written in The Guardian, this sparked a heated discussion between the co-stars. This is when Sir Lawrence Olivier delivered one of the greatest comebacks of all time.
When Hoffman started defending his actions, the Englishman simply replied, “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”
I was going to bring up the same thing.
In one of Elmore Leonard’s pulp novels the main character is a writer and one of the people interested in his latest story is Dustin Hoffman. I suspect that there was a lot of actual events in it. He really threw some shade on Dustin.
I wonder if Hoffman also ran a marathon to prep for the part?
LOL! I for one cannot stand to watch any old Hoffman flicks... as he is always so much "acting'.... Maybe Tootsie... of course that does feature a smoking hot Jessica Lange....
I recall an interview with some famous actor that started off with method acting. He said it got to the point where he didn’t want to talk with his wife or kids (or be with them) while he was shooting a film.
Then some other, more famous actor, told him a similar thing - to just become a better actor and act. He had to work hard at it, but got it.
“We’d be doing a scene and my wife would call and leave a message. There would be a short break in the filming and I’d return her call and talk about whatever it was she needed. 10 minutes later I’m doing the scene where I’m shooting the guy. The director couldn’t believe it.”