November 7, 2026, 8:01 a.m. ET
In his new, unfiltered memoir, Dustin Hoffman candidly recounts the ups and downs of making “The Graduate,” “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Rain Man.”
But in “Look at Me” (out Nov. 10), co-written with journalist Ariel Levy, the Oscar winner opens up in detail for the first time about multiple allegations of sexual assault. In 2017, eight women accused the actor of sexual misconduct, including groping, lewd comments, indecent exposure and forced oral sex. Two of the women said they were aged 15 and 17 at the time of the alleged harassment.
No prosecution or criminal charges have been filed against Hoffman, who has denied the accusations. In 2017, his lawyer dismissed them as “defamatory lies” in a statement to Variety.
In “Look at Me,” Hoffman presents himself as a prankster who will do anything for a laugh, whether he’s performing on set or hanging out with friends.
“I am not trying to humiliate or offend anyone,” the actor wrote. “I’m not the type of person who likes to have power or pressure people to do things. To be completely honest, I’ve never considered myself a person with power.”
He continues to write that he was initially very encouraged by the #MeToo movement, as many women and men spoke out against allegations of misconduct by powerful Hollywood figures such as Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK and Kevin Spacey.
“When the report began to make the rounds on the Internet and spread to Hollywood, I thought it was a very good thing,” Hoffman writes. “I knew at that point that a lot of women had been put through too much for too long in my industry. Not for a second did I worry that anything negative would be said about me, because the idea of taking something from someone sexually that they didn’t want to give… it’s just not something I’ve ever done. Or been tempted to do.”
But suddenly, “my whole life changed,” Hoffman adds. “There was no innocent until proven guilty. There was no evidence at all.”
He compares his cancellation to the blacklisting of the McCarthy era in Hollywood, in that no one wanted to meet or talk to him. During that time, he leaned on Lisa, his wife of 46 years, with whom he shares four children.
“Lisa says I went into a state of shock,” Hoffman writes. “‘I have to get out of here,’ I told him. ‘I have to get away from all other human beings.’ We hid in our house in Connecticut. The first time we went to a restaurant there, we were both shaking, imagining that every person we encountered was staring at the outcast and his accomplice.
The whole situation was “so crazy that I was sort of perplexed as to how to defend myself… or if I should even try,” Hoffman continues. “I didn’t want to fight against something that I thought was important. I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of my own values. The only problem was that things were being said about me that just weren’t true. I’m sure it’s true that in my life, especially forty years ago, I made some women uncomfortable. … But ‘uncomfortable’ is a subjective emotional state. What is rude and offensive to one person, another might find hilarious.”
Hoffman admits he has blind spots, like not realizing the misogyny in his 1971 thriller “Straw Dogs.” But he also explains that he’s always liked “dirty jokes.”
“It’s not the same as pressuring someone to do something they didn’t want to do. Or firing someone because they wouldn’t do it,” Hoffman writes. “If I were a woman, would the bawdy jokes between takes seem threatening instead of funny? Would I have a totally different sense of humor? That’s something I’ve thought about a lot. And honestly? I guess that’s probably not the case. I’ve spent my life analyzing characters, human behavior, and I don’t think women are inherently healthier than men.”
Hoffman has continued to work fairly steadily since his 2017 accusations, appearing in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” in 2024 and the crime drama “Tuner” last summer.
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