Top 107 Quotes & Sayings by Dustin Hoffman
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Dustin Hoffman.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Well this is aptly called a junket, for both of us. I have never been to a house of prostitution, but I understand that you get in more than seven minutes.
I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.
I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.
Well first of all, it's hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.
A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.
The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.
Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.
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 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.
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.
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.
If there is no direct threat why are we invading?
I did a movie called Marathon Man and it was one of my best memories.
And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.
I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.
So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.
For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that that administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that's reprehensible.
I think there's always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can't feel that they have any hero qualities unless there's someone beneath them.
I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast feed.
Blame is for God and small children.
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.
I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.
If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.
In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.
Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.
We need to band together as a unit every day, especially to conquer the strength of the AIDS virus.
Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why
I knew I finally made it as a performer when I began hearing rumors that I was gay.
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.
Acting didn't solve much! If it did, I would have ended up much less crazy than I am today, but I'm not. At least for me, acting is a relief - a relief to be able to admit certain things about myself and disguise in my work, in my characters.
You spend so much of your life basing yourself on what you think other people think of you. Then you realise that maybe one of the purposes of life is not to care.
It's very painful for us to feel we deserve a life. That's the toughest thing. That we deserve to have a life. That can take a lifetime.
The better you are as a parent, the richer the nest you've built, the more difficult it is for your kids to leave. So they have to invent things to dislike about you. And they're brilliant at it.
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.
Life is an occasion...rise to it.
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 mean, I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like every other baby?
I got into acting so that I could meet girls. Pretty girls came later. First, I wanted to start off with someone with two legs, who'd smile at me and look soft.
37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime.
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.
To have a successful marriage, a man must, on a fundamental level be scared shitless of his wife.
Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I've never been bored.
But I would reinvent myself if I could. As a sexy leading man! We all would like that, but I don't know how to.
If you're waiting for the job, you're dead.
If you can get out there and say I'm going to...I'm willing to fail at what I feel is right, that's it.
I lived below the official American poverty line until I was 31.
Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me... aren't you?
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.
My wife always says that I will be stuck with this forever: I am the difficult one. With Jack Nicholson they always said it was drugs. Warren Beatty is supposed to have screwed everything that jumped off the curve. I'll tell you, in reality a few of us had as many girls as Warren.
I think one of the things you have to be aware of as an actor is that if you come on the set and see the director standing there mouthing all the words while a scene is going on, that's usually a very bad sign because it means the director has already shot the scene in his head. He knows exactly the rhythm and the nuances that he wants delivered in the line and you're not going to dissuade him.
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.
I'd like to thank my parents for not practicing birth control.
It's true what they say about failure. You don't learn from success.
One of the things you can do as an actor, is compensate for the things you can't do in life.
I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast-feed.
The Academy Awards are obscene, dirty . . . no better than a beauty contest.
I think 'retirement' goes hand in hand with people who make a living by having a 'job.' I don't think we-the .00001 percent of the population who are so fortunate to love passionately what we do-consider it a 'job.
This is your life. Now go make it the one you've always wanted.
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.
I walked out of the theater and started crying. My wife asked me, 'Why are you crying?' I said, 'Because I can't do that.' I didn't know how he did it. I've never seen anything like that. It's like this feat, this Rodin sculpture to me. It's like hearing an opera singer and the tears go down your face because it's not human what they're doing. It's like sounds of heaven.
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