3.08.2024 – Translated from Ukrainian via Google and OFP

Dustin Hoffman learned not so long ago that his ancestors – grandparents Frank Hoichman and Esther Cherkovskaya – were from Ukraine, or more precisely from Bila Tserkva, which is not far from Kyiv. According to the actor himself, his family carefully hid the story of moving to the United States, since it was associated with dramatic events from which adults tried to protect the younger generation.

Frank and Esther were the first to leave Ukraine for Europe and later for the United States, but when pogroms began in their homeland, Hoffman’s grandfather returned to save his parents. Not only was he unable to do so, but he himself died: together with his father, Samuel, the actor’s great-grandfather, he was arrested and then shot – this happened in 1921. After reading the documents that confirmed the veracity of these events, the actor could not hold back his tears. “My relatives died so that I could live here and become who I have become,” he says in an interview. “The topic of relatives was never raised in our family – it was believed that we did not need them, but it turns out that my father simply wanted to protect us and my mother from the horrors associated with the tragedy of our family.”

“They won’t take you as an actor – you’re not handsome”

One of the most famous actors in Hollywood was born on August 8, 1937, shortly after his parents, Lillian and Harvey, moved from Chicago to Los Angeles. Dustin’s father worked as a furniture designer, sales agent, and prop master at Hollywood studios. It was he who infected his son with a love of cinema, telling him funny and instructive stories that happened on film sets. Nevertheless, at first the boy dreamed of becoming a jazz musician, like his mother: he taught himself to play the piano (he still loves to play it), studied music at schools in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, but then made two sharp turns in his fate: first he entered medical college, from which he was soon expelled, and then he decided to try his hand at acting.

His relatives tried to dissuade him using tactful expressions, but his Aunt Pearl did not mince words. “They won’t take you as an actor,” she told her nephew, “you’re not handsome.” Dustin did not think about a career as a Hollywood celebrity at that time – the reason why he made such a choice was more prosaic: he wanted … to arrange his personal life. Thus, the modest and shy Hoffman got the opportunity to meet and communicate with girls, until then he had not succeeded in this – they simply did not pay attention to him. At the college where Hoffman entered, according to his friend, no one failed the acting program, but despite such low requirements, he lasted there for only a year, but during this time he managed to debut on Broadway and play in an episode of the television series “Naked City”.

“Little Big Man”

In the next few years, Dustin did nothing but, according to his biographers, tramp around the theater stage (both on Broadway and in other New York theaters) and occasionally appear on television shows. Everything changed when he finally played in the full-length film “Tiger Pretends to Do It.” With this work, Hoffman attracted the attention of directors and soon received the lead role in Mike Nichols’ comedy “The Graduate,” thereby breaking all the stereotypes concerning Hollywood heroes – tall and hypertrophied masculine handsome men that viewers were accustomed to. For this work, the actor received a fee of 17 thousand dollars, which at that time was a decent amount, and his first Oscar nomination for “Best Actor.” But before that, he did not even go to auditions for the lead role – he was sure that he would not get it.

“When you hear the same thing over and over again,” Hoffman says in an interview, “you start to believe that it’s true. At auditions, I was constantly told that I was ugly (my friend Robert Duvall called me Barbra Streisand in men’s clothing), short (I’m 1.58 meters tall), and therefore imperfect and can’t claim a leading role – at best, I can only be a funny-looking secondary character.”

Critics believe that Hollywood should be grateful to Hoffman for making an ordinary, unremarkable, albeit very likeable person the hero of American cinema – in 19th century literature such people were called “little ones”, nevertheless, leaving him the right to a happy life. It is symbolic that one of Hoffman’s films is called “Little Big Man”. Robert De Niro praised Hoffman’s influence on the acting profession, saying that he is “an actor with the face of an ordinary man who embodied heartbreaking humanity on the screen.”

Two Oscars and a Tootsie

Hoffman’s second Oscar nomination came for his role in Midnight Cowboy, which was released in 1969. In the 1970s, he was nominated for the highest cinematographic award twice more, until he received his first Oscar in 1979 for his work in Robert Benton’s drama Kramer vs. Kramer. Riding the wave of success, he starred in the comedy Tootsie, during the filming of which he spent most of the time dressed as a woman. In the second half of the 1980s, Hoffman appeared in a new project every year and even tried himself as a producer in the television version of Death of a Salesman, for which he received an Emmy Award. In 1988, perhaps the actor’s most famous film, Barry Levinson’s drama Rain Man, was released, for which Hoffman received his second Oscar and the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. In total, Hoffman has almost fifty films to his credit, including Meet the Fockers, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Sleepers, and Joan of Arc.

“He’s difficult to work with.”

Film critics have hung a lot of labels on Hoffman, some of which are positive and some negative: he has often been called a goal-oriented perfectionist, while also being noted as “difficult to work with.” “I know a lot of people who have been called that,” the actor says in an interview, “and their characterizations are no more true than mine, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a word of truth in my reputation. Difficult is anyone in our business who questions work, either their own or someone else’s. I can’t accept that the result of a shoot is good if it’s actually bad – that’s probably why I’m called difficult.”

Father of six children

Hoffman’s life is not limited to the set – he is a wonderful family man and the father of six (!) children. Two – from his marriage to his first wife, ballerina Anne Byrne (common Jenna and adopted Karina), with whom he lived for ten years, and four – from his childhood friend and now businesswoman Lisa Gottsegen, with whom the actor has been married since 1960: sons Jacob and Maxwell, daughters – Rebecca and Alexandra.

On the brink of life and death

Dustin Hoffman has been on the brink of death at least twice in his life. The first time was when he was just starting his acting career. At a party where Dustin and his then girlfriend decided to celebrate a role he had received in the theater, a pot of fondue oil caught fire, and Hoffman received third-degree burns. Then he literally ran away from the hospital, because he did not want to miss work on the play, and rehearsed for a week in bandages, refusing to take painkillers – he was afraid that their sedative properties would reduce the speed of the actor’s reaction. Hoffman’s condition worsened, and his doctor insisted on a difficult operation, the results of which were unpredictable. He survived, but Hoffman still remembers what it cost him to spend a month in the hospital, during which his neighbors in the ward died one after another. The actor admits that at that time he reconsidered his attitude to his life, promising himself to appreciate every moment of it.

In 2013, 75-year-old Hoffman was diagnosed with cancer. Fortunately, the disease was detected in the early stages, and the timely surgery was successful. The fact that the beloved actor had survived cancer became known when everything was behind him. According to the star, his wife Lisa, who was always by his side, helped him get through the difficult times.

https://www.obozrevatel.com/novosti-obschestvo/dastin-hoffman-zvezda-gollivuda-obladatel-oskara-uznal-o-svoem-ukrainskom-proishozhdenii-v-vozraste-78-mi-let-i-rasplakalsya.htm