Dustin Hoffman Calls 'The Graduate' Shoot a 'Terrible Experience'

Dustin Hoffman says Mike Nichols made co-star Katharine Ross slap him 27 times for a scene the director "didn't even use" in 1967's "The Graduate." Hoffman calls filming the movie that made him famous a "terrible experience" in a new essay for The New Yorker.

The actor, who shot to fame playing Ben Braddock in Nichols' classic comedy-drama, writes that he felt out of place from day one. "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," Hoffman writes. "It was a terrible experience making the movie that changed my life."

Why did Hoffman feel miscast?

Much of his anxiety came from a conviction that Nichols was angry with him — either for acting badly, or because the director had "realized what everybody else already knew, that he had miscast the lead in his film." The film, Hoffman writes, "exacerbated all my insecurities from the start."

He didn't even want to audition. "When my agent said that Mike was interested in me, I didn't even want to try out for the part," he writes. He had read the Charles Webb novel Nichols was adapting and concluded the part wasn't his: "A track star and straight-A student, the head of the debate team—this was an affluent, all-American kid, whose surname was 'Braddock.' Why would you cast a person who looks as ethnic as I do to play the ultimate Wasp? It made absolutely no sense." His agent persuaded him to screen-test anyway, and he got the role.

On set, Hoffman found Nichols "frequently sour" — a "shocking, destabilizing" shift from his manner during rehearsals. "I often felt that I was about to be fired. When we were shooting some of the film's most famous sequences, I remember thinking, I have no fucking idea what I'm doing," Hoffman writes.

What happened with the 27 slaps?

Hoffman says Nichols was "irritable with everyone," but a "certain sadism" crept in only with him. The clearest case: the scene where Benjamin, soaked from rain, runs into Elaine's room to confess an affair with an older woman — and Elaine realizes the woman is her mother.

"There was a scene in which Katharine Ross had to slap me, and he made us do twenty-seven takes," Hoffman writes. "Mike just kept telling Katharine to hit me, to hit me harder. Katharine worried she would hurt me, and I told her, 'I'm O.K. Just don't hit my ear.' Unfortunately, she missed a few times. I was dizzy by the end of that day, and Mike didn't even use the slap in the film."

The physical toll didn't stop there. The next day, Hoffman shot an underwater sequence in a scuba suit. "When I came up for air after a few takes, there was blood trickling out of my ear. Between all the slapping during the previous day and all the water pressure at the bottom of the pool, I'd punctured an eardrum," he writes.

What does this change for the film's legacy?

"The Graduate" opened in theaters on Dec. 22, 1967. It earned seven Oscar nominations and won best picture at the 40th Academy Awards. Hoffman's account adds a darker production backstory to one of Hollywood's most celebrated films — and to the record of Nichols, who died in 2014 and can't respond.