I’ve been looking forward to Dustin Hoffman’s memoir since before I learned he was writing it. One good reason: he has given as many terrific performances in as many terrific movies as any American movie star, past or present. Name two Hollywood films from the 1960s that hold up better than The Graduate (1967) and Midnight Cowboy (1969)—and these were just the first two pictures Hoffman starred in, unless you count Un Dollaro per 7 Vigliacchi, a slapstick Italian-Spanish crime caper shot in 1966 that was the actor’s true first lead role (opposite Caesar Romero, no less) but which received only a belated release in the U.S. in 1969 as Madigan’s Millions, in hopes of drafting on The Graduate’s success. Even that’s a tribute.
A second reason I’ve been eager for the memoir is that, in interviews over the last couple decades, once he outgrew his youthful, Oscar-boycotting self-seriousness, the now 89-year-old Hoffman has proved himself a sharp, funny, and engaging raconteur, and whatever the contributions of co-author Ariel Levy, Look at Me is proud to be a raconteur’s book. (Somehow the publisher resisted titling it “I’m Talkin’ Here!”)