In 1967, The Graduate became the highest-grossing film of the year in the United States, and became a worldwide hit. Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman starred in some of the most legendary sequences in the history of cinema over its 105-minute runtime, it received seven Oscar nominations (including acting nods for its leads) and to this day there are few who can see a shot without breaking into Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs. Robinson. But, of course, it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
The Graduate gets slapped
Now, Hoffman has recalled the experience of shooting The Graduate as something terrible: “I immediately felt uncomfortable, undeserving of what I was doing. There I was, playing the lead in a Mike Nichols film, the hottest director around, but I felt I had no right to be there. It was a horrible experience making the film that changed my life”. Imagine: the entire shoot thinking Nichols would realize he’d chosen the wrong leading man.
Although his performance went down in history as the insecure Benjamin Braddock, the truth is that it wasn’t so much a performance as real life: “I often felt I was about to be fired. When we shot some of the most famous sequences, I remember thinking I didn’t have a fucking clue what I was doing“. And the worst was still to come.
In particular, there was one scene that could be considered risky… that we didn’t even see: “It was the one where Katharine Ross had to slap me, and he made us repeat it 27 times. Mike kept telling Katharine over and over to hit me, to do it harder. She was afraid of hurting me and I’d tell her, ‘I’m fine, just don’t hit my ear’. Sadly, she did a couple of times. I was dizzy by the end of the day, and Mike didn’t even use the slap in the film”. Who said actors didn’t earn their pay?
