Early Life
Hoffman was born in Los Angeles, the second son of Lillian (née Gold) and Harry Hoffman. His father worked as a prop supervisor/set decorator at Columbia Pictures before becoming a furniture salesman. Hoffman was named after stage and silent screen actor Dustin Farnum. His older brother, Ronald, is a lawyer and economist. Hoffman is from an Ashkenazi Jewish family of immigrants from Ukraine and Romania. His upbringing was not religious or observant. He graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1955 and enrolled at Santa Monica College with the intention of studying medicine, leaving after a year to join the Pasadena Playhouse.
Read more about this topic: Dustin Hoffman
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)