LONDON -- Dustin Hoffman delivered an emotional account of his 30-plus years in the movies at an invitation only event at the British Academy of Film & Television Arts on Tuesday evening.
Tears first came when Hoffman began explaining the background to landing the role in Kramer vs. Kramer, a part he won his first best actor nod for in 1980.The two-time Oscar winner, speaking at the British Academy's HQ, broke down in tears twice and drew lots of laughs while talking through his filmography as part of Bafta's Life in Pictures season of events.
"I was getting divorced, I'd been partying with drugs and it depleted me in every way," Hoffman said.
His voice began to crack when he began explaining he didn't want to meet with the producer Stanley Jaffe and director and writer Bob Benton because he didn't like the script.
"You're script has no feeling of what I'm going through," Hoffman said as the tears came when recalling the emotional turmoil of his breakup and divorce.
He explained through tears that "for whatever reasons you just end up not being able to inhabit the same space," referencing the break-up from first wife Anne Byrne and the fact "there were children involved."
He also said at the time he had just come off the back of doing two movies back to back – Straight Time and Agatha – and had "decided to quit movies for a second time."
He previously thought he'd quit after one critic labelled him as a "cretin" in The Graduate.
But Benton persisted, asking Hoffman what it would take for him to change his mind and do the movie.
"We'd have to go into a room for three months and rewrite it," Hoffman said, saying that is exactly what they did.
"We finished and I got offered a writing credit and stupidly turned it down," Hoffman said, "but it was a liberating experience for me to push all the stuff I was going through out there."
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