These Three Hollywood Legends All Lived Together – And The Stories Are Truly Wild

Between themselves they have five Academy Awards and 19 nominations. But at first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s all actors Hoffman, Duvall and Hackman have in common. Because not only do these thespians seem to have come from different sides of the tracks, but they’ve barely worked with each other either.

Sure, there have been a couple of occasions when some of them shared the same screen. Both Duvall and Hackman starred in Geronimo: An American Legend in 1993, while the latter acted alongside Hoffman in 2003’s Runaway Jury. On the whole, though, these three always seem to have run in different circles.

Yet all three titans of acting have a storied history that goes beyond their statuses as screen legends. For close to seven decades, these famous faces have shared one of Hollywood’s least likely friendships. And it all began in 1956 when two misfit acting hopefuls met at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Then a 27-year-old former Marine from the Midwest, Hackman did not look or act like anyone else at the school. But among all the beach-ready bodies of his Californian classmates, the acting hopeful found someone who also didn’t fit in. “The first time I saw [him, he was] in a, uh, corduroy vest,” he told The New York Times in 2003 of his and Hoffman’s first meeting.

So these two outsiders became firm friends. But their insistence on studying acting in their own way didn’t exactly endear them to their teachers. Hackman’s grades, for instance, were so low after his first semester that he was kicked out of the school. Yet this initial failure would prove the catalyst to a long and acclaimed career.

Burned by his rejection from the school, Hackman moved to New York aiming to prove his teachers wrong. He caught several gigs on Broadway there, as well as the attention of Warren Beatty. Impressed with his performance in 1964’s Lilith, Beatty was instrumental in getting Hackman his big break in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde.

With this big break, Hackman gained his first Oscar nomination. And just four years later, he’d go on to win the award for his role in The French Connection. Through later films like Superman and Unforgiven, Hackman confirmed that he was more than just a great actor – he was a bona fide icon.

Yet Hackman wasn’t the only talented thespian who rose up out of New York City. Way before becoming a Hollywood legend, Hackman starred in a play alongside another aspiring star – Duvall. Like Hackman, Duvall had served in the military and against all odds was determined to make it in acting.

So the budding actor left his day job as a mailman and dove headfirst into acting. And Duvall eventually gained acclaim for his roles in classic films like The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and Tender Mercies. But as with Hackman, he’d have to work through plenty of rejections and small parts to get there.

Hackman and Duvall started hanging out after working together. And during a conversation in 1958, Hackman mentioned a friend who was moving to the city. As Duvall recalled to Oprah’s Master Class in 2015, “[Hackman] said, ‘There’s this guy with a big nose and black hair [who’s] going to be coming back. He’s going to be sleeping on my floor – Dustin Hoffman.’”

While Hackman was busy proving his detractors wrong in New York City, Hoffman remained studying in Pasadena. Yet he still wasn’t fitting in with the Hollywood-ready, classically handsome students in his class. The final nail in the coffin came when a teacher took him aside with a word of advice – stick to the theatre.

Now obviously time has proven just how wrong that teacher was. With iconic roles in The Graduate, Tootsie and Rain Man to name just a few, Hoffman is now regarded as one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. But for an actor like Hoffman who’d always been sensitive about his appearance, this advice was all he needed to hear at the time.

So Hoffman left the school and with his remaining $50 headed straight for New York. His experience of living in the metropolis, at first, was overwhelming and isolating. Thankfully his friend Hackman provided him with friendship and – in the apartment he shared with his wife Faye – a place to crash.

And it wasn’t long before Hackman introduced his former schoolmate to Duvall. To say the three of them got along like a house on fire would be an understatement. What really connected these young men was a shared appreciation of acting and a desire to move the craft into new and uncharted waters.

As Hackman explained to Vanity Fair in 2004, “There was a kind of feeling of Jack Kerouac at that time.” Motivated by the era’s Beat culture, the trio began exploring new ways to express themselves on stage. “It didn’t have anything to do with being successful,” the star added, “just wanting to try this thing and see if it worked.”

Yet this forward-thinking technique didn’t gel well with casting directors of the time. Often all three failed to leave an impression at auditions. Plus they’d lose roles to more conventionally minded actors whose showy and theatrical performances differed from the trio’s subtler approach.

Thus rejection was par for the course for these three friends. And each man dealt with it in differing ways. Hackman, for example, took it in his stride with each “no” making him more determined. But Hoffman took failure personally, and he was known to angrily pace around a room while swearing to himself.

There was another crucial difference between Hoffman and Hackman. At eight years Hoffman’s senior, Hackman was already married and living with a partner. And having the younger, and very much still single Hoffman staying in their two-bedroom apartment, was becoming something of a problem for the couple’s personal life.

So after three weeks of sleeping on his friend’s floor, Hoffman moved out on his own. He’d jump from apartment to apartment in the following few years, without ever really finding somewhere to settle. That is until he and Duvall banded together and found their own place to live.

As is the case for two young and single men, Hoffman and Duvall bonded over their pursuit of the opposite sex. Whenever they went out, the duo regularly helped each other to chase women. Hoffman even recalled his friend stripping off and joining him and a date as they showered together. Crowded perhaps?

“We were obsessed with sex,” Hoffman confessed to Vanity Fair. So great was their obsession that it would occasionally come between them and their acting.Yep, the pair chose acting coaches based on how many female clients they had. “Much as we were adherents to our craft, we looked for classes with women,” Hoffman added.

For the married Hackman, womanizing wasn’t on his mind. But he did indulge in a much more reckless form of release from time to time. While hanging out with Hoffman and Duvall, the actor would sometimes abruptly leave the group to find a random bar and start a fight.

While his friends loved partying and mixing with fellow performers – including future-star Elliott Gould – Hackman was much more introverted. As Duvall explained to Vanity Fair, “I always remember Gene as a tormented guy, always into his own space, his own thing.” In keeping with this tortured persona, Hackman went long periods without speaking to his pals.

When they weren’t looking for auditions, the trio supported themselves with odd and often demeaning jobs. By far the most hardworking was Hackman who – with a young son to support – seemingly took on any task no matter how embarrassing it was. Once while working as a doorman, he encountered an old Army friend who chided Hackman for how low he’d sunk.

Other jobs included a stint as a furniture mover, a role he proved more adept at than the frailer Hoffman. On briefly working with Hackman in the removal business, Hoffman later joked, “I lasted about an hour.” Yet he could take comfort knowing he wasn’t the worst at the profession – one of their actor friends once managed to destroy a priceless Picasso on the job.

Many of these roles proved soul destroying to these young actors. Yet they could find ways to enrich their craft among the tedium of a shop floor. Hoffman, in particular, worked for a time at the New York Psychiatric Institute, and he spent hours studying the complex behaviour of its patients.

Another benefit of these jobs was the freedom it allowed the trio to practice their art. And Hoffman more than anyone liked to test what theatrics he could get away with at work. One time while employed as a toy salesman at Macy’s, the star passed off Hackman’s son Christopher as a life-sized doll to one unwitting customer. Now that we would’ve loved to see.

But even when the trio found work doing what they loved, the experience proved to be equally crushing. This is something that Duvall found out when he was appearing in a play with a young Jon Voight. Looking out into the audience, the actor was shocked to discover that one onlooker had fallen asleep.

If audiences could be bad then critics were worse. Having just premiered in a play, Duvall read a scathing review in the New York Post that went for his performance in particular. So distraught was the future star that he moved back in with his parents and considered giving acting up for good.

Yet Duvall returned to New York after three months – following encouragement from director Ulu Grosbard. And there he was able to share his frustrations with his pals Hoffman and Hackman. “We used to go to Cromwell’s drugstore on Rockefeller Plaza, make a lot of jokes – gets you through the day,” Duvall told Vanity Fair.

And yet Duvall wouldn’t stay a struggling actor for long. He got his first screen role as Boo Radley in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird which he soon followed with his first major acting award – an Obie in 1965. By the start of the next decade, roles in M*A*S*H and The Godfather established Duvall as a rising star.

Though his friends were surely happy for Duvall, his new success still left a mark. “We were both jealous of Bobby Duvall, because he got the work very early on,” Hackman told The New York Times. Yet Hackman soon got his own chance to succeed in Lilith and later in Bonnie and Clyde.

But it would take a little while longer for the world to recognize Hoffman’s talents. In 1966 – after years spent getting by on odd jobs and small roles – the actor received an Obie for The Journey of the Fifth Horse. This in turn led to him being invited to read for film director Mike Nichols.

A nervous Hoffman flubbed his lines on the day of the audition, and came across like a deer in headlights. So badly had he done that the actor even apologized on his way out the door. Yet Hoffman’s anxious performance captivated Nichols. And it resulted in the star getting his first defining screen role – as The Graduate’s Benjamin Braddock.

Although it became Hoffman’s breakout film, The Graduate almost featured another member of the acting trio. Yep, Hackman was also in the film before ultimately being fired. “I had nothing to do with it,” Hoffman said of his friend’s casting. “I would have done everything in my power to not have him in it. I didn’t want to be upstaged.”

Perhaps this is why this trio starred in so few films together after making it big. Having seen each other’s commitment to a role, maybe the thought of sharing the same screen was too intimidating. And considering that collectively the three have acted alongside Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando, it would certainly show the regard each man has for each other.

It’s unlikely that you’ll ever see these three icons up on screen together again. Because Hackman – after almost six decades in the business – retired from acting in 2004. And while Hoffman and Duvall are appearing in movies still, these friends no longer share the same closeness they had in their youth. That’s not exactly uncommon, to be fair.

“[We] just have different lives [now],” Hoffman told The New York Times. Yet he wonders whether they’ve stopped seeing each other – not because of their busy schedules – but because they remind each other of their pre-fame lives. “I’m still waiting on tables, and [Hackman]’s still moving furniture,” Hoffman added.

If you’d asked any of those young men then if they would have become the stars they are today, the response would have been stark. “[The] whole place would have erupted,” Hoffman told Vanity Fair, “and we would have been part of the laughter.” So their story truly shows that persistence can get you to the highest places. And that the comfort of friends can help ease the journey.