In an interview from December that’s going viral this week, an emotional Dustin Hoffman shares how the film Tootsie and his character, Dorothy Michaels, came to be.
The 1982 film was both funny and touching. It focused on a struggling actor who can’t get a gig and decides to become a woman to see if that helps.
Hilarity ensued, but to Hoffman, it was more than just a comedy.
The two-year process of getting into his character and seeing how life would be different for her changed his perceptions of female beauty forever.
Three decades later, he tears up talking about it.
As a "woman," he felt he was basically shunned because he wasn’t "beautiful" in the traditional sense – something we saw this week with Marion Bartoli.
When Hoffman describes how he wouldn’t have talked to his female alter ego because "she" wasn’t good-looking enough, it’s enough to give you you pause.
Hopefully we can all learn something from such experiences – even if we haven’t literally stepped into the shoes of the opposite sex as Dustin has.