Dustin Hoffman Calls Making The Graduate a "Terrible Experience"

Dustin Hoffman has written that making The Graduate was a "terrible experience," even though he says the 1967 film changed his life. He sets out the account in an essay for The New Yorker, titled "Surviving 'The Graduate,'" dated 31 October 2026 and drawn from his memoir Look at Me. Variety reported on the essay.

Hoffman played Ben Braddock, the young man who returns to suburban Los Angeles from an Eastern college for the summer. The director was Mike Nichols. Hoffman wrote that he felt uncomfortable and unworthy from the moment he was given a starring role. He worried that Nichols was angry with him, or that he had miscast the lead.

He also described Nichols as frequently sour on set. In his telling, the director's mood during rehearsals was warm, and the change on set was shocking and destabilising.

The slap scene is the centre of his account. Katharine Ross had to slap him, and Hoffman wrote that it took twenty-seven takes at Nichols' direction. Nichols kept asking Ross to hit harder. By the end of that shoot day, Hoffman wrote, he was dizzy. Nichols did not use the slap in the finished film.

The next day brought an underwater scene in a scuba suit. Hoffman wrote that he punctured an eardrum, and blood ran from his ear. He put the injury down to the previous day's slapping combined with the water pressure at the bottom of the pool.

The film first reached cinemas on 22 December 1967. It went on to become one of the best-known American comedies of its era, and The New Yorker ran a piece on its appeal in July 1968.

For readers who know the film only from the screen, the essay shows how much of the final scene was shaped by a director pushing for a harder take, and by an actor who was hurt in the process. It also shows that a film can be remembered warmly by the public while its making felt hard to the people in front of the camera.