Dustin Hoffman, 89, has disclosed that a stubborn nasal side effect, not willpower, saved him from a fatal cocaine habit.
The two-time Oscar winner reveals in his new memoir, “Look At Me,” that Paramount executive Bob Evans introduced him to the drug during the 1970s while Hoffman was filming the thriller “Marathon Man.” The actor writes that he took to it immediately. “God, did I love it,” he writes in the book. But the morning after brought crippling congestion that left him gasping. “The day after I did coke, I could barely breathe,” he notes.
That physical reaction became his unexpected exit ramp. Hoffman writes that he remains grateful for the blockage decades later. “If it weren’t for the congestion,” he writes, “I’d be dead right now. That’s how much I love cocaine.”
Evans, who died in 2019 at 89, was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1980. He had been a dominant force at Paramount during the studio’s 1970s resurgence, and his friendship with Hoffman placed the actor inside the era’s most notorious party circles.
The memoir also revisits Hoffman’s fraught experience making “The Graduate,” the 1967 film that made him a star. He writes that the shoot was “terrible” and that after covering his own expenses, he walked away with surprisingly little money despite the movie’s massive success.
On the “Marathon Man” set, Hoffman found himself opposite Laurence Olivier, the legendary British actor he nervously addressed as “Lord Olivier.” To ease the formality, Hoffman began calling him “‘Lordage’ instead, which amused him, and he kept calling me ‘dear boy.'” When filming ended, Olivier presented him with twelve volumes of the Temple Shakespeare Collection filled with the elder actor’s marginal notes. “These aren’t the fancy editions,” Olivier told him. “But they’re my favorite. These are for you now, dear boy.”
Hoffman had turned to cocaine in the aftermath of his first marriage. He and Anne Byrne had divorced, and the drug became part of his social life as he entered his late thirties. The memoir frames this period as one of professional intensity and personal reckoning, with the “Tootsie” star eventually steering clear of deeper addiction only because his body rebelled.
The book arrives as Hoffman continues working into his ninth decade, his career spanning from “The Graduate” and “Midnight Cowboy” through “Rain Man” and “Tootsie.” “Look At Me” pulls back the curtain on both the glamour and the toll of that longevity, including financial disappointments and the pressures of sharing sets with towering figures like Olivier.
Hoffman’s publisher has not announced any scheduled appearances or tour dates connected to the memoir’s release.