How Playing a Woman Changed Dustin Hoffman’s View of Female Beauty

In this must-watch interview, while preparing for his role as Dorothy Michaels for his starring role in the 1982 movie Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman gets asked to consider how he would be different if he were born a woman.  What follows is a huge realization on gender roles in our society.

After being made up as woman, and realizing that on film he wasn’t a particularly attractive and that there was no chance of being any prettier, it led to a moving epiphany when he realized that, as a man, how many women he overlooked simply because they weren’t attractive enough or who fulfilled the demands that society has instilled about what women are supposed to look like.

As he says in the interview through tears, “There are too many interesting women who I have not had the chance to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.”  It was in that moment that he knew the Tootsie was not a comedy and that the movie had to happen.  He knew that Dorothy Michaels, the woman he played in the movie, was interesting, but he also knew, given how unattractive she was, he would never talk to her.

Thank you, Mr. Hoffman.  You continue to be one of my favorite actors!