Dustin Hoffman Quotes

It isn’t a big jump in the imagination to see yourself living alone like Mr Hoppy.

I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.

It's true what they say about failure. You don't learn from success.

What makes divorce happen is that you can't be in the same space any more, for whatever reason - but the love stays. And that's the killer. That's where the vehemence and anger and rage comes from.

I lived below the official American poverty line until I was 31.

The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.

37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime.

There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom.

I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.

I wanted to be a jazz pianist, but I wasn't good enough. I got into city college because I didn't have the grades to get into university. I took acting because it was a way to get three credits. I just needed three credits and my friend told me to take acting because it was like gym - nobody fails you. I took it and that's literally how I got involved in acting.

We need to band together as a unit every day, especially to conquer the strength of the AIDS virus.

Canada is like a nice family living over a biker bar . . . They keep telling the downstairs neighbors to keep down the noise, people are trying to sleep.

I knew I finally made it as a performer when I began hearing rumors that I was gay.

One of the things you can do as an actor, is compensate for the things you can't do in life.

So, most of it was done over the phone. But one of the first things I did as a director, because it's one of the first things you should do, even though most don't, is to ask good actors who they think is right for the part. They know better than anybody. But without missing a beat Maggie said Pauline Collins. I didn't know Pauline because I hadn't seen Shirley Valentine, but then I saw this thing that she did with Woody Allen [You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger], in which she was wonderful as a psychic, and I said to her on the phone: "The dialogue seemed improvised."

I knew that we had an obligation and that was to keep an energy in it and try to keep the audience interested. In fact, I asked some of the actors to take a look at His Girl Friday, a Howard Hawks film with Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant, because they talk over each other and there's a great energy.

I decided a long time ago but sometimes it takes you 40 years to get around to doing something - and that's the truthful answer.

I think right now television is the best that it’s ever been, and I think that it’s the worst that film has ever been.

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.

The truth is, the older you get, the less variety of parts you are offered. If you're a star and you've spent most of your career being able to take your pick of the litter, you notice when the offers start to diminish. You're too old to play leads, so you're offered the supporting role - but many stars don't want to make that transition. They see it as a sign of symbolic impotence. And that the audience will no longer regard them as a star. I love acting, and I'm not going to determine what I do based on what I fear other people might think. I do what I want to do.

This is your life. Now go make it the one you've always wanted.

The truth is, I've made about 30 movies in 30 years, and I've been criticized for 30 years for not making more movies.

Somehow I think it was declared very early on that I was the - if not the black sheep of the family, not a very good student.

I think we all felt it on this movie - crew and cast. You never know when you're making a movie... no one is saying in the middle of Casablanca that this is going to be a classic. The lead actors had turned it down and I think they wound up with B-list actors at the time.

You go to the cinema and you realize you're watching the third act. There is no first or second act. There is this massive film-making where you spend this incredible amount of money and play right to the demographic. You can tell how much money the film is going to make by how it does on the first weekend. The whole culture is in the crap house. It's not just true in the movies, it's also true in the theater.

I don't like the fact that I have to get older so fast, but I like the fact that I'm aging so well.

So, they had this 40-odd year friendship with each other and with Mr Harwood. So, when I came on it Albert, Tom and Maggie were in the cast. But then Albert wasn't up for it, so he had to withdraw.

There's too many interesting women I have…not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.

I wanted to find my limitations so I decided to do Shylock. And if I fail? I've never been afraid of that. I have other fears - doing bad work knowingly is the worst fear.

We're not allowed in the cutting room - and that's extraordinary. So, when a director is asking for certain nuances and colours and we feel that they're phoney, but we do it because the director asks for it, that's the one that they pick in the cutting room. And I contend that when you see a movie with bad acting, don't blame the actor... blame those guys in the cutting room because they like that take.

Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.

You're always in a tunnel that you can't see the end of. But there's something that took place on this movie that I don't think we expected and that was that once we decided that the entire cast would be real retired opera singers and retired musicians... and these people the phone hadn't rung for them for 20 or 40 years even though they can deliver.

The Academy Awards are obscene, dirty . . . no better than a beauty contest.

Euthanasia is legal in Hollywood. They just kill the film if it doesn't succeed immediately.

I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.

I love acting, and I`m not going to determine what I do based on what I fear other people might think. I do what I want to do.

Stories? We all spend our lives telling them, about this, about that, about people … But some? Some stories are so good we wish they’d never end. They’re so gripping that we’ll go without sleep just to see a little bit more. Some stories bring us laughter and sometimes they bring us tears … but isn’t that what a great story does? Makes you feel? Stories that are so powerful … they really are with us forever.

I don't believe in hell. I believe in unemployment, but not hell.

I came in on this movie after there had been a director and I came in after Tom Courtenay had talked to Ron Harwood about making a movie. So, you know Tom and Albert Finney had been friends since the beginning of their career as they became stars around the same time - Tom always reminds me that Albert was first with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and then Tom with The Long Distance Runner.

I like to mimic my grandkids. I'm trying to understand the intensity of fixation on a leaf. Kids don't need anything else in their life.

I did a movie called Marathon Man and it was one of my best memories.

To have a successful marriage, a man must, on a fundamental level be scared shitless of his wife.

There's nothing that I love more than predawn. I'm with the dogs, I make coffee, and there's no one up.

Usually, those people don't even like actors and they can't wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down in categories: directors who like to be surprised and some of them abhor being surprised. As far as directing, we all direct when we're acting in movies... every single one of us.

One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed.

A "take" is an opportunity to fail ... and we think that we have to get it right all the time.

For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that's reprehensible.

This is not a movie about smelling the urine! It's another kind of movie." Volker Schlöndorff got Billy Wilder to agree to these conversations - you can buy it - because Volker spoke German at times. And he said to Billy Wilder: "What is in your mind?" And he said: "If you're going to try to tell the truth to the audience, you'd better be funny or they'll kill you." And I haven't forgotten that.