Dustin Hoffman wanted to be a beautiful woman in Toostie

“I didn’t want the audience to suspend their believability. When we got to that point and looked onscreen,I was shocked that I wasn’t more attractive! I said,’Now you have me looking like a woman. Now make me a beautiful woman!’ Because I thought I should be beautiful. If I was going to be a woman,I would want to be as beautiful as possible. And they said to me,’That’s as good as it gets. That’s as beautiful as we can get ya,Charlie,” Hoffman,75,told American Film Institute this December.

The clip is gaining attention because Hoffman starts crying while talking about his experiences. “It was at that moment that I had an epiphany,and I went home and started crying,talking to my wife. And I said,’I have to make this picture.’ And she said,’Why?’ And I said,’Because I think I’m an interesting woman when I look at myself onscreen. And I know if I met myself at a party,I would never talk to that character because she doesn’t fulfill physically the demands that we’re brought up to think women have to have in order for us to ask them out. And I said ‘There’s too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.'”

Hoffman played an out-of-work theatre actor in the hit comedy who manages to get work in a popular TV show by transforming himself into a woman. The actor said he never considered Toostie a comedy.