An older Dustin Hoffman interview making the rounds online shows the actor tearing up over his regret at not having known more “interesting women” because they did not “fulfill, physically, the demands that we’re brought up to think [they] have to have in order for us to ask them out.”

Hoffman was talking about preparing for his role in the 1982 comedy “Tootsie,” directed by Sydney Pollack.

The Academy Award-winning actor’s vulnerable confession reveals the profound personal and social loss both men and women suffer at being “brainwashed,” as he says, into valuing image and appearance over substance and quality of character in themselves and others. For this experience, Hoffman says, the film was not a comedy for him.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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