attention

In his jaunty new memoir, Dustin Hoffman describes himself as “a guy with a bawdy sense of humor who is obsessed with sex and is always looking for attention.”

Yet in “Look at Me,” the two-time Oscar-winning actor maintains that “when a reckoning started making its way around the internet, and tearing through Hollywood, I thought it was a very good thing.” Until, in 2017, he found himself in the crosshairs of #MeToo, accused by several women of sexual misconduct from decades earlier.

Hoffman denied the allegations at the time, issuing only a vague apology. In the memoir, he admits to having “made some women uncomfortable” and perhaps being “guilty of insufficient empathy.” But “taking something from someone sexually that they didn’t want to give,” he writes, “it’s just not something I’ve ever done.”

He also says: “Different times have different rules. The way we perceive what’s appropriate all depends on the air we’re breathing.”

Draw your own conclusions.

Co-authored with New Yorker staff writer and “60 Minutes” contributor Ariel Levy, “Look at Me” is a gossipy, entertaining compendium of stories assembled in a nonchronological mosaic. It makes clear that Hoffman wasn’t the most congenial of colleagues. His intense combination of self-confidence and insecurity led to repeated clashes with directors and sometimes costars. He even quarreled with his Method acting teacher, Lee Strasberg.

About all this, he is mostly unapologetic. “I’m really not that difficult,” he insists, only partly tongue in cheek. “It’s not my fault I’m right all the time.”

Hoffman, as the unemployable actor Michael Dorsey, famously lampooned his own perfectionistic tendencies in the 1982 film “Tootsie.” He reproduces one comic scene in the memoir. Director Sydney Pollack, as Dorsey’s agent, George, tells him: “You argue with everyone. You’ve got one of the worst reputations in this town.” Dorsey indignantly defends his refusal to sit down while portraying a beefsteak tomato, declaring: “Nobody does vegetables like me!”

There is just enough candor and self-reflection in “Look at Me” to make the actor seem, on balance, sympathetic, even endearing. Certainly, Hoffman’s childhood in Los Angeles was not easy. His father, the onetime head of the Columbia Pictures prop department, aspired to directing but became instead a perennially bankrupt businessman. When Hoffman was about 12, his mother urged him to get a nose job. “No one suspected I might have any kind of intellect or talent,” he recalls. “I was designated to be the failure in the family, and I accepted my role entirely.”

A distracted student, he found focus in an acting class. There, he writes, “for the first time in my life I had girls whom I considered to be attractive approaching me.” Later, when he became famous, he recalls women waiting for him on his Manhattan doorstep.

Like many young New York actors, Hoffman struggled for years to get roles and make rent. He lost one big break — a 1964 Broadway debut in Frank Gilroy’s “The Subject Was Roses” — after suffering severe burns in a kitchen accident. He stoically showed up for rehearsals anyway but ended up in the hospital and was fired. That misfortune left him free to accept an Obie-winning part off-Broadway that led, circuitously, to his career-making 1967 role as Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate.”

Hoffman’s philosophy of acting inevitably caused conflicts. “You can’t force me to do something that feels inauthentic to me,” he writes. “Truthful acting has to do with understanding a character’s inner life, not forcing outward expressions of emotion.” Until an actor finds his character, “blindly obeying the director isn’t going to fix anything.”

Hoffman was so stymied by his autistic character in “Rain Man” (1988) that he almost quit the movie. Director Barry Levinson’s collaborative spirit kept him engaged. But he tangled with other directors, including Pollack and Nichols, who directed “The Graduate.” Working on that film was “a terrible experience,” Hoffman remembers, but Nichols’ later praise mollified him.

Hoffman’s relationship with Steve McQueen, his costar in the 1973 film “Papillon,” followed a similar trajectory. Furious when McQueen chased a friend of his from the set, Hoffman gave McQueen the silent treatment and then ranted at him on a live microphone as the rest of the cast and crew listened in. But he concludes the story on an upbeat note, quoting a letter, four years later, from McQueen that said: “We were good, weren’t we?”

Hoffman lavishes his own encomia on friends and costars, including Tom Cruise (“Nobody worked harder”), Robin Williams (“the fastest brain I’ve ever encountered”), Gene Hackman (“hilarious”), Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and others. As the director of “Quartet” (2012), he worked with “the incomparable Maggie Smith,” known for her curmudgeonly temperament. In a backstage encounter in London years later, she greeted him warmly as “Dustin! My favorite Jew.”

The nonlinear, anecdotal structure of “Look at Me” presents some challenges. The narrative ping-pongs somewhat confusingly between Hoffman’s two wives — dancer and actor Anne Byrne, whom he divorced in 1980, and his longtime spouse, Lisa Gottsegen. It also skips around freely among his films, including “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), “Lenny” (1974), “All the President’s Men” (1976), “Marathon Man” (1976) and “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979).

Even now, at age 89, Hoffman’s restless self-doubt persists. “I’ve never allowed myself to feel truly gratified by a positive review or deserving of a trophy,” he confesses. “But I can remember every negative review I ever received.” Only in his family life — he has six children and eight grandchildren — does he seem to permit himself unalloyed joy.

The memoir’s title, “Look at Me,” drawn from a conversation with Laurence Olivier, suggests a profound, narcissistic neediness that may be endemic to the profession. What distinguishes Hoffman, along with his unconventional leading-man looks, is the magnitude of his talent and his unyielding faith in his own instincts. No doubt many egos, and maybe hearts as well, were bruised along the way. But the camera loved him, and it is hard to argue with the results.

Klein, a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia, has been a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.

Soaring gas prices and a war with Iran. Historically low approval ratings. A potential blue tsunami. A new rape allegation.

President Trump has a lot on his plate, and so too does the nation. Sunday, he took to Truth Social to address the people.

“Let’s talk about this COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER, Bill Maher,” the president wrote at the top of his longest post ever.

A fireside chat it was not.

The 1,300-word-plus screed was triggered by Friday’s episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” a mainstay on HBO since 2003. The comedian referred to Trump as a “lame duck” president with low approval ratings during a segment with his guest, former White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Trump, 80, likely expected praise from his fellow curmudgeon Maher, 70, since the men had recently dined together at the White House. It was their second such date following a controversial get-together in March 2025, which Maher juiced for all it was worth in an effort to stand out from his fellow late-night hosts.

Maher’s chummy relationship with Trump has made him an outlier among his peers, many of whom have been in the president’s crosshairs.

CBS canceled Stephen Colbert’s show after decades on the air following pressure from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chair. Trump has bitterly complained about being treated unfairly by Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers. They, too, now have targets on their backs.

Maher has avoided the same fate by railing on Trump only half as much as his late-night peers, leaning into various MAGA grievances about the “woke” left and forging a fair-weather friendship with the second-term president.

If the Maher of 2003 could see himself now, he’d likely dedicate a searing monologue to the hypocrisy. The host was once positioned as an irreverent comedian whose political satire was guided by his no-BS take on Capitol Hill and American culture. Common sense over party fealty. Political correctness be damned.

But as the political landscape has shifted, so too has Maher’s approach.

Now he plays the role of a staunchly nonpartisan crank on TV while dining with the president in person.

“Yeah, I did it again, b—!” Maher said to his audience Friday. “I know. I’m the bad guy because I go and say face-to-face to the man the things you write in articles that he’ll never read, but OK. You know what? F— you. I like these dinners.”

So brave. So calculated.

Maher was dipping back into the attention he received in 2025, when he first dined with Trump and described the president as “gracious and measured.”

Their rendezvous was just the sort of thing the comedian would have mercilessly lampooned if he wasn’t in fact part of the joke. Fellow comedians such as Patton Oswalt have criticized the HBO host for placating Trump, while Larry David satirized Maher’s first date with the president in a New York Times essay titled “My Dinner With Adolf.”

The controversy was a boon for “Real Time,” boosting its waning relevance by putting Maher back in the news and reinforcing the tired charade that his fearlessness knows no bounds.

This week’s public skirmish was a repeat performance, if not a somewhat pathetic display of both men’s need to agitate for attention.

Maher told his audience on Friday’s episode that he spoke with the president about deadly ICE incidents, Ukraine and how Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was “dragging” Trump down. In closing, he assured the audience he was no pushover by poking at the president’s recent favorable dealings with Russia (a diesel deal, lifting sanctions), then saying, “I could not have been treated better if I was Russian.”

Given the president’s delicate psyche, Maher knew anything short of absolute praise would be perceived as an insult. As for the knock about Trump’s slumping approval numbers? A sure trigger.

In Sunday’s Truth Social manifesto, Trump referred to Maher as a “biased, dumb SLEAZEBAG” whose program is plagued by low ratings. The president also alleged that the comedian was drunk and had a drink in hand as he toured the White House on Oct. 15, and that Maher is a “major POTHEAD” who “looked like hell this time.”

So much for Trump’s initial comments about their meeting. He had told reporters that it was “a great dinner.”

“Bill Maher, I tell you what, he likes me a lot more than people understand,” Trump said. “And I actually like him.”

Not unlike Trump, Maher also enjoys praise, and blames the “woke left” when he doesn’t get it.

The typically smug host appeared upset earlier this year at the Golden Globes when presenter Wanda Sykes roasted him and another nominee up for best performance in stand-up comedy on television, Ricky Gervais.

“There’s some people pissed off that a queer Black woman is up here doing the job of two mediocre white guys,” Sykes said. “… But first, I want to give them some love.” Addressing Maher directly, she said, “You give us so much. But I would love a little less. Just try less.” The camera panned to a stone-faced Maher, who appeared “butthurt” (a term he likes using to dismiss the gripes of folks he gripes about).

The bruised feelings didn’t stop there. Later, on Maher’s “Club Random” podcast, he vented about being passed over by Hollywood.

“I’ve been nominated for 33 Emmys, and they would never give it to me,” he told his guest Joel Edgerton. “I speak freely, and this woke town f— hates that. That’s OK. I’ve made my peace with that, so I know how this goes.”

If Maher has been “soft-canceled” by the industry, as he claims, then Hollywood has a funny way of showing its disdain: HBO renewed “Real Time” through 2028.

Perhaps he learned from his frenemy Trump that grievance politics sells, and it’s time to cash in.