Dustin Hoffman has been one of the finest actors working in Hollywood for over half a century now. He first burst onto the scene when he starred in 1967’s The Graduate as Benjamin Braddock, a character we can all relate to, and he’s been delivering spectacular performances ever since for the likes of Sidney Lumet and Sam Peckinpah. Even when it would be easy for him to phone in a role, like when he played Bernie Focker in Meet the Fockers, Hoffman still knocks it out of the park.
10. The Graduate (88%)
This is the movie that made Dustin Hoffman’s career back in 1967. Mike Nichols’ The Graduate might be famous for its subplot in which an older woman named Mrs. Robinson seduces the lead character, but the film’s staying power comes from its relatable themes. Hoffman stars as Benjamin Braddock, a smart young kid who graduates from college and realizes that he has to actually start his life now. He’s gone from school to school in anticipation of adult life, and now that it’s actually here and he has to make some serious decisions, he has no idea what he’s going to do. We’ve all been there.
9. Rain Man (89%)
This heartfelt drama was a showcase for the acting talents of both Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Cruise proved that he wasn’t afraid to play a character who was unlikable as Charlie, whose father dies and leaves money to a brother he didn’t know he had. So, Charlie hits the road in search of his brother, Raymond, played by Hoffman, who he finds has autism. As he takes Raymond back home to collect their inheritance, Charlie realizes that Raymond’s condition allows him to count cards, so they stop off at a casino to clean up. Rain Man is a powerful, emotionally charged two-hander.
8. Tootsie (90%)
Tootsie is one of the funniest and sweetest comedies of all time. Dustin Hoffman stars as a struggling actor named Michael who can’t land a male role, so he dresses up as a woman, starts going by Dorothy, and finds work playing a female role. (This one would actually be an interesting candidate for a female-fronted reboot, because it would address the lack of strong female roles in Hollywood.) The great thing about the premise is that, in pretending to be a woman, Michael is taking on his most difficult acting challenge of all – convincing people that he is literally someone else.
7. TIE: Kramer vs. Kramer (91%)
The unparalleled talents of Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep helped to turn Kramer vs. Kramer into one of the saddest movies of all time. They’re a married couple, and one day, Streep just takes off without saying a word, leaving Hoffman to raise their son alone. Then, suddenly, she reappears and files for divorce.
While she was gone, Hoffman had to learn to be a single parent, taking care of their son on his own, and all of a sudden, he might lose his son altogether, because Streep wants full custody. As many children of divorce are tragically forced to do, the kid is asked by a judge to choose between his mother and his father.
6. TIE: Midnight Cowboy (91%)
Although it’s really Jon Voight’s movie, Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Midnight Cowboy is iconic. Voight stars as Joe Buck, a country boy who moves to New York with ambitions of being an escort for wealthy socialite women. However, he arrives at the Big Apple and finds that life won’t be that easy. As he becomes a flat-out prostitute and downsizes to a crummy, vermin-infested apartment with Hoffman’s ailing character Ratso Rizzo, it’s revealed that his dreams of a career as a gigolo stem from a harrowing history of sexual abuse at the hands of his grandmother. It’s a really depressing movie, but also a masterfully made one.
5. TIE: All the President’s Men (93%)
One of Alan J. Pakula’s many paranoid political thrillers of the ‘70s, All the President’s Men directly addresses the reason for that paranoia: the Watergate scandal. Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford star as Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the two journalists who fought tooth and nail to get the bottom of the scandal, and spoke to the mysterious “Deep Throat” figure to blow the whole thing wide open. William Goldman adapted the script straight from Woodward and Bernstein’s book of the same name. All the President’s Men is a testament to the power of the free press and an impeccably crafted thriller.
4. TIE: The Meyerowitz Stories (93%)
Although he doesn’t appear an awful lot on-screen, Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Noah Baumback’s The Meyerowitz Stories had to be riveting, because it was the crux of the whole story. He had Adam Sandler with his first wife, then neglected him when he had Ben Stiller with his second wife, and that has led to Stiller becoming a successful, ambitious, and emotionally stable businessman and Sandler becoming kind of a loser who struggles to make an emotional connection with anyone. As the patriarch at the center of this family-driven mix of comedy and tragedy, Hoffman’s turn anchors the whole film.
3. Lenny (95%)
Lenny Bruce is considered by many to be the godfather of modern standup comedy. He was famously tried for obscenity a number of times throughout his career. He was the guy who revolutionized the form by writing his own material and using it to take on the establishment.
Until Bruce came along, comedians all shared the same hacky jokes about their mother-in-law. This biopic based on his life is sometimes a little by-the-numbers in its execution, but its subject is so fascinating and Dustin Hoffman’s lead performance as Bruce is so endlessly compelling that it hardly ever becomes an issue.
2. Little Big Man (96%)
Directed by Bonnie and Clyde’s Arthur Penn and written by Paths of Glory’s Calder Willingham, Little Big Man is a western following a white man who was raised by Native Americans. The movie’s main focus is on the cultural and sociological differences between American pioneers and Native Americans. Being released in 1970, Little Big Man used the motifs of the western genre to provide veiled critiques of the Vietnam War. It has an anti-establishment message and depicts the U.S. military in a negative light, which many critics have read (and did read, at the time) as a protest against the war.
1. Death of a Salesman (100%)
Dustin Hoffman played the lead role of Willy Loman in this made-for-TV film adaptation of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, widely considered to be the greatest American play ever written. Being produced for television meant that director Volker Schlöndorff had no need to push the boundaries of the play to be cinematic, and he could keep the focus where it should be – on the characters and their story – even recruiting Miller himself, who was understandably precious about the material, to adapt his own text for the screen. This 10-time Emmy nominee is, without a doubt, the definitive screen version of Death of a Salesman.
