Dustin Hoffman says he was held at gunpoint by the husband of woman he was having an affair with

EntertainmentMovie
10 Nov 2026 • 5:28 AM MYT
The Independent
The Independent

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Dustin Hoffman says he was held at gunpoint by the husband of woman he was having an affair with

Dustin Hoffman is looking back at his past — and it’s brought back some wild stories.

Ahead of the release of his upcoming memoir Look at Me, the 89-year-old actor appeared on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast Monday, which is when he asked host O’Brien if he had ever had a “gun pointed at him.”

O’Brien answered no, which prompted the legendary Meet the Fockers star to launch into his own story from his “youth” that involved a gun.

Hoffman explained that years before he became a famous Hollywood star, he was “having an affair with a married woman.”

“She thought that once her husband went to sleep that he stayed asleep. I was invited to come over after he went to sleep,” he explained.

Hoffman went on to say that he and the woman were having “a festival of sorts” when her husband “walked in with a gun” and pointed it at him, telling him to get out of his house.

“When you have a gun pointed at you — first of all, that hole is much bigger than the actual hole — you realize how, any second, he’s gonna pull that trigger,” Hoffman said. “His finger is on the trigger and you think, any second. You realize, that’s it. I’m going to die. You will do anything to avoid getting killed.”

The Rain Man actor married his first wife, Anne Byrne, in 1969. He adopted her daughter, Karina, from a previous marriage before they went on to have a daughter, Jenna, together. The former couple was married until 1980.

Later that year, he moved on by marrying Lisa Gottsegen Hoffman. They share four children: Jake, Rebecca, Maxwell and Ali.

Dustin Hoffman shares new anecdotes in his forthcoming autobiography (Getty)

Hoffman’s memoir, which comes out Tuesday, contains a variety of stories from the Oscar-winning actor’s decades-long career.

In an extract of his autobiography that was published by The New Yorker, Hoffman said that filming the classic 1967 movie The Graduate was a “terrible experience” for him.

He claimed that, at director Mike Nichols’ instruction, his co-star Katharine Ross slapped him 27 times on camera.

“I felt immediately uncomfortable, unworthy,” he wrote in the autobiography. “Here I was, playing a starring role in a movie by Mike Nichols, who was the director of the moment, but I felt like I had no right to be there.”

Hoffman added: “It was a terrible experience making the movie that changed my life.”

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