Dustin Hoffman Says Filming ‘The Graduate’ Was a ‘Terrible Experience’ and Director Mike Nichols Made Katharine Ross Slap Him 27 Times for a Scene He ‘Didn’t Even Use’

Dustin Hoffman, who shot to fame after starring as Ben Braddock in Mike Nichols’ classic film “The Graduate,” has opened up about his experience shooting the 1967 comedy-drama in a recent essay for The New Yorker, which he described as having been a “terrible experience” despite the fact that the movie changed his life.

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“I felt immediately uncomfortable, unworthy. Here I was, playing a starring role in a movie by Mike Nichols, who was the director of the moment, but I felt like I had no right to be there,” writes Hoffman early in the piece of his time on set. “It was a terrible experience making the movie that changed my life.” Much of his anxiety stemmed from worrying that Nichols “was angry at me, either because I was doing something wrong or because he had realized what everybody else already knew, that he had miscast the lead in his film.”

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Hoffman writes that the film “exacerbated all my insecurities from the start.” “When my agent said that Mike was interested in me, I didn’t even want to try out for the part. I had read the Charles Webb novel that Mike was adapting, and it was obvious that…

Original source: https://variety.com/

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