Hollywood legend Dustin Hoffman has revealed a shocking secret from his younger years, recalling how a forbidden affair with a married woman nearly cost him his life when her furious husband caught them together and confronted him with a gun.
The 89-year-old Oscar winner shared the frightening encounter during the November 9 episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, describing the moment he became convinced he was about to be shot.
The startling confession came as Hoffman promoted his new memoir, Look at Me, which is scheduled for release on November 10.
During the podcast, Hoffman unexpectedly asked host Conan O’Brien whether anyone had ever pointed a gun at him. When O’Brien said no, the Rain Man star launched into a story about a dangerous romantic encounter from his youth.
According to Hoffman, he had been secretly seeing a married woman who believed her husband slept so soundly that he would never discover their affair.
The woman invited Hoffman into her home after her husband had gone to bed, assuming he would remain asleep throughout the night.
But their secret rendezvous took a terrifying turn when the husband unexpectedly appeared with a gun.
Hoffman recalled that the man pointed the weapon directly at him and demanded that he leave the house.
Suddenly, what had begun as a romantic encounter became a potentially deadly confrontation.
The actor said staring down the barrel of the gun left him certain that his life was about to end.
“I’m going to die,” Hoffman remembered thinking.
He explained that the opening of a gun barrel appears enormous when someone is pointing it directly at you, particularly when the person holding the weapon has a finger on the trigger.
Hoffman said the experience made him realize how quickly everything could end and how desperately a person would react to survive.
The Hollywood veteran did not identify the woman or her husband, reveal precisely when the incident occurred, or explain how he ultimately escaped the confrontation.
The revelation offers a surprising glimpse into Hoffman’s life before he became one of Hollywood’s most celebrated actors.
Hoffman married his first wife, actress Anne Byrne, in 1969. The couple had a daughter, Jenna, and Hoffman adopted Byrne’s daughter, Karina, from a previous relationship. Their marriage ended in 1980.
Later that year, he married Lisa Gottsegen Hoffman. The couple, who remain married, have four children together.
The gunpoint confession is not the only explosive revelation Hoffman has shared while promoting his autobiography.
In an excerpt published by The New Yorker, the actor described his experience filming the 1967 classic The Graduate as deeply troubling, despite the movie ultimately transforming him into an international star.
Hoffman claimed director Mike Nichols repeatedly instructed co-star Katharine Ross to slap him during a scene, forcing the actors to repeat the sequence 27 times.
According to Hoffman, Ross worried about hurting him, but Nichols continued demanding harder slaps. By the end of filming, Hoffman said he was dizzy, and the scene was ultimately left out of the finished movie.
He also recalled suffering a punctured eardrum while filming an underwater sequence the following day, an injury he attributed to the earlier slapping combined with water pressure.
“It was a terrible experience making the movie that changed my life,” Hoffman wrote.
Despite those difficult early experiences, Hoffman went on to become one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed performers, winning Academy Awards for Kramer vs. Kramer and Rain Man.
Now, nearly six decades after his breakthrough, the legendary actor is pulling back the curtain on the extraordinary moments that shaped his life, including one secret affair that he says nearly ended in tragedy.
Source: Iwpost.com
