  Dustin Hoffman in Stranger Than Fiction
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HOLLYWOOD -- A few years ago, Dustin Hoffman realized he'd retired without meaning to.
"I stopped working because I didn't like the scripts that were being offered to me," the two-time Oscar winner reveals during interviews at the Four Seasons, "and the next time I turn around it's three years later."
The problem? Hoffman, a notorious perfectionist whose creative differences -- i.e. battles -- with directors are the stuff of Hollywood lore, wasn't getting any younger while the roles he'd grown accustomed to cherry-picking stubbornly stayed in the same age range.
"These leads are written for people in their 20s, 30s, less in their 40s. It's worse for women -- much more difficult. When you see someone like Meryl Streep or Emma Thompson, they're defying gravity ... (By the time) you're in your 50s and 60s, we tend to support by that age. We support who the lead is, unless you're developing projects yourself.
"So the criteria I had was out the window because I'd only say yes (to a movie) if there was a variety of factors that congealed -- who's the director, who's the cast, what's the part like, how good is the script -- I could pick (which one I wanted)."
About this time -- as the box-office clout he'd enjoyed since his breakthrough in 1967's The Graduate waned -- a conversation with his wife of 26 years, attorney Lisa Gottsegen, gave him a new perspective.
"My wife said to me the magic words, 'Why don't you throw away that criteria you've had for 35 years.' But I said, 'What about the part?' 'Forget it.' 'What about--?' 'Forget it.' She said, 'You're only happy when you're working with people who are really creative and that should be your only criteria.' It's been a moving experience for me. And ironically, that's why (I became) an actor in the first place."
Among those creative people count filmmaker Marc Forster, who directed Hoffman in Finding Neverland and now casts the 69-year-old actor as a literary professor in Stranger Than Fiction.
The surreal dramedy concerns Harold Crick, an IRS auditor (Will Ferrell) who discovers he's the fictional protagonist of a novel. Worse, he learns the author (Emma Thompson) plans to kill him off. Crick enlists Hoffman's academic alter-ego, Jules Hilbert, to help him prevent his pending -- and seemingly irreversible -- demise.
It's the sort of supporting role Hoffman could sleepwalk through, one presumes.
But Zach Helm, the tyro scribe who penned Stranger Than Fiction, as well as directs Hoffman in the forthcoming fantasy Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, says if age has mellowed Hoffman's outlook, it hasn't modified his tenacious work ethic. "He's willing to get in there with Will or Emma and really work with them ... It's always the learning experience with him, which is fantastic."
Explains Hoffman, "I don't ever feel, and I mean this, that I'm anything more than a student. (Acting is still) a challenge ... (Steven) Spielberg, I didn't know if still does it, but a couple years ago, he told me he throws up on the way to work on the first day. Sugar Ray Leonard told me the same thing -- that he threw up before every fight and then he comes out. You're driven by fear. I am."
With Stranger Than Fiction in theatres Friday, Hoffman will next be seen in the German-financed film Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, based on the novel. Hoffman got the part after approaching the director, Run Lola Run's Tom Tykwer.
"That's the best part of (being a celebrity) -- you have access to talented people. I can say, 'How can I get in contact with Tom Tykwer?' I never used to do that, but I do now."
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