Stars of David Read Free Page B

million? [An estimated 5.7 million.] I think there’s thirteen million in the world [13.9]. So in a sense, we’re miscast by definition, aren’t we? That’s what a minority is: It’s a piece of miscasting by God.”
    Hoffman grew up unreligious—“My father later told me he was an atheist,” he says of Harvey Hoffman, a furniture designer. Though they celebrated Christmas, one year he decided to make a “Hanukkah bush” instead. “About the time I realized we were Jews, maybe when I was about ten, I went to the delicatessen and ordered bagels and draped them around the tree.”
    But when it came to Hoffman’s neighborhood friends, something told him he should deny his Jewishness. “It was so traumatic to me, before puberty, realizing that Jews were something that
people didn’t like
. I have a
vivid
recollection—literally
sensory
feeling—of the number of times people would say to me (whether they were adults or kids), ‘What are you?’” Hoffman pauses. “It was like it went right through me.” He twists his fists into his belly. “It was like a warning shock—painful. And I
lied
my way through each instance of that kind of questioning. So here would be the dialogue: You ask me, ‘What are you?’”
    POGREBIN: “What are you?”
    HOFFMAN: “American.”
    He gives me direction: “Now you press.”
    POGREBIN: “What kind of American?”
    HOFFMAN: “Just American.”
    POGREBIN: “What are your parents?”
    HOFFMAN: “American—from Chicago.”
    More direction: “Keep pressing—because they would. They’d ask, ‘What
religion
are you?’ And I’d play dumb.”
    So he knew that being Jewish was something to hide? “Oh God, yes,” he replies immediately. “I didn’t want the pain of it. I didn’t want the derision. I didn’t come from some tough New York community where I’d say, ‘I’m Jewish—you want to make something out of it?’ There was an insidious anti-Semitism in Los Angeles.”
    It’s one of the reasons he was impatient to move to New York, which he did, at age twenty-one. “I grew up always wanting to live in New York, even though I’d never been here. And what’s interesting is that all people ever said to me and still say is, ‘Oh, I always assumed you were from New York!’ Even now, if you look Jewish, you’re from New York. I didn’t know that most of the Jews in America live in New York. But I did know it inside. I flew to New York to study acting in 1958; I took a bus from the airport terminal to New York City and they let me off on Second Avenue. It was summer, it was hot, and I walked out of the bus, and I saw a guy urinating on the tire of a car, and I said, ‘I’m home.’” He smiles. “The guy pissing on the tire must have represented to me the antithesis of white-bread Los Angeles: New York City was the truth. It was a town that had not had a face-lift, in a sense—that had not had a nose job.”
    Despite the city’s ethnic embrace, when it came to open casting calls, Hoffman learned quickly into which category he fell. “Character actor,” he says with a grin. “The word ‘character’ had a hidden meaning: It meant ‘ethnic.’ ‘Ethnic’ means nose. It meant ‘not as good looking as the ingenue or the leading man or leading woman.’ We were the funny-looking ones.”
    I ask whether it frustrated him—being pigeonholed. “Sure. But everything frustrates you when you’re not working.” He pauses. “I think I just gave you the glib answer. I think the non-glib answer would be how quickly you accept the stereotype that’s been foisted on you: ‘They’re right; I’m ugly.’ You learn that early, before you even think about acting.