London - Dustin Hoffman slapped Meryl Streep in the face and taunted her about her recently deceased lover.
The method was Hoffman’s way to get the best performance out of her while shooting Kramer vs Kramer, according to a new book.
Hoffman pushed the so-called “method” acting to its limits during the filming of the 1979 drama about a failed marriage, the biography of Miss Streep claims.
The actress went “absolutely white” when Hoffman goaded her about actor John Cazale and hit her on the cheek, leaving a red mark.
Hoffman is said to have allowed the boundaries of fiction and reality to collapse so that he saw Streep as his soon-to-be ex-wife - and took out his rage on her.
The claims show an unlikely side to Hoffman who is best known for much gentler roles in films such as Rain Man. But according to Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep, by Michael Schulman, to be published next month, Hoffman had a dark side as well.
An extract of the book in Vanity Fair magazine says that “in his effort to fill every screen moment with tension, he would locate the particular vulnerability of his scene partner and exploit it”.
Kramer vs Kramer would go on to win five Oscars, including Best Actor for Hoffman and Best Supporting Actress for Miss Streep.
At the time she auditioned for the film, she was 27 and grieving for the death of Cazale, best known for playing Fredo Corleone in the Godfather films. He had died of lung cancer aged only 41.
The book said: “Dustin knew that Meryl had lost [Cazale] only months earlier, and from what he saw, she was still shaken to the core.”
The Vanity Fair article says that on the second day of filming, Hoffman slapped Streep “hard” in the cheek just before they came on set to shoot an elevator scene. Director Robert Benton assumed she would file a complaint - but simply carried on acting.
As they filmed the next scene, Hoffman taunted Streep about Cazale and continued “goading and provoking her”. Producer Richard Fischoff said Hoffman was “using stuff that he knew about her personal life and about John to get the response that he thought she should be giving in the performance”.
Not even the seven-year-old boy who played the Kramers’ son Billy could escape Hoffman’s mind games, the biography says.
Before a serious scene he would tell Justin Henry to imagine losing his dog.
Daily Mail