Today, Monday 8 August, Dustin Hoffmannwinner of two Oscars, for playing the man in whom he leaves his wife Meryl Streep Kramer versus Kramer (1979) and a person with autism in Rain Man (1988), turns 85.

Dustin Lee Hoffman is famous for playing a wide range of difficult roles, from the cheating cheater to Pe.lost in the night (1969) to the actor pretending to be a woman in tootsie (1982). He has been nominated seven times for the Hollywood Academy Award, always as an actor in a starring role.

To the four titles mentioned above must be added those of Graduation (1967), Lenny (1974) and lies that kill (1997), where the recently injured Anne Heche.

Maybe blow out the candles today with some of the many friends you’ve met over the years, including Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Spike Lee, Katharine Ross, David Thewlis, Jack Nicholson, Maggie Smith, Robert Duvall, Barbra Streisand , Judi Dench, Jason Bateman and Jon Voight. He is about to celebrate 42 years of second marriage to Lisa Gottsegen. He is the father of six children.

Hoffman, who has recovered from skin cancer, has a reputation for being hard to work with due to his perfectionism. And, aside, his artistic career is full of curiosities.

10 curiosities

• They named him for the role of Rick Deckard in Blade Runner (1982). They tried to convince him for several months, but he saw the film in a very different way than what Ridley Scott wanted.

Can anyone imagine Deckard played by Hoffman instead of Harrison Ford?

• He was a neighbor of Mel Brooks in New York and would play the role of Franz Liebkind in the first Brooks film, With a flop, millionaires (The Producers, 1967). Shortly before filming began, Hoffman was offered the role of Ben Braddock Graduation (1967), with Brooks’ wife, Anne Bancroft. There he made no mistake and got his first Oscar nomination at the age of 30.

In the film, she played a character who was 20 years younger than Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), even though she was only six years her senior.

• He had expressed a desire to play the lead role in gandhi (1982), but it was offered tootsie (1982) the same year and ended up working on a comedy with Jessica Lange. He would then lose the Best Actor Oscar to Ben Kingsley, who played Gandhi.

• He shared an apartment, at first, with Gene Hackman. She slept on the kitchen floor. And they used to go up to the roof of the building to play the drums. Hoffman played the bongos and the actor of Contact in France played the conga. They did it for the love of Marlon Brando, whom they had heard playing in clubs: they wanted to be like him, they were big fans of him.

• And the dream of working with Brando almost came true. But Francis Ford Coppola imposed a taste on him, and however much they wanted to compel Hoffman to play Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972), the role went to Al Pacino.

• Despite being old friends and roommates of Hackman’s, it was literally decades before they appeared in a movie together. He had just entered The judgeor court on the run (2003). And Hoffman told him no to being the evil Lex Luthor in Superman (1978) with Christopher Reeve. Who took the card? You got it right, your friend Gene Hackman.

• And it was Gene Hackman who gave him the nickname Hook, as his friends now call him. Hoffman appeared in two Peter Pan movies: indeed hook (1991), directed by Steven Spielberg, e Discovering the Neverland (2004), opposite Johnny Depp.

• during the recording Discovering the Neverland (2004) lost a fingertip and filmed that day with morphine.

• It entered the Guinness Book of Records as “Longest time frame starring a film actor” for Little Big Man (1970), in which he played a character aged 17 to 121.

• One night he was having dinner with Paul McCartney and he told him the story of Pablo Picasso’s death and his famous last words: “Baby for me, baby for my health. You know I can’t drink anymore.” Paul had a guitar and immediately improvised a chord progression as he sang that Picasso quote. thus it was born Picasso’s last words (Drink for me)one of the songs on his album Band on the run.