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Hoffman read it on the plane flying home and was hooked. While his lead players are actors, Hoffman filled up the retirement home with real aging opera singers, "people who had performed in places like La Scala, but no one has rang their phone or knocked on their door in 20 years," he said. "They're a special breed of people. Everything is heightened. I do think they're superhuman," Hoffman said. "They're like an exaggeration, kind of, of actors. I mean, we're all horny bastards but they're off the charts. And they're detached from themselves.
'How are you doing today, Maurice?' He says, 'The voice isn't good.' Not my voice. It's THE voice." Just like his aging opera stars, Hoffman has found his acting choices diminishing as he ages. A stage star in his 20s, Hoffman hit it big in Hollywood at age 30 with "The Graduate" and had a solid run of leading roles well into his 50s. Inevitably, he has fallen back mostly on secondary roles in his 60s and 70s. "I think supporting roles by definition are two-dimensional. You can't put the third dimension on it, you don't have the screen time to go home and see what their life is like," Hoffman said. "They're supporting the three-dimensional characters, and yes, I guess you do miss that, because you got used to trying to peel that onion in terms of those lead characters that you played." The exception to losing out on lead roles as actors age "would be people that carry the gun. The people that hold the gun have a longer lifespan," Hoffman said. "John Wayne hung in there, Sean Connery hung in there. If you're an action star, the gun is a phallic symbol. It's the last thing to age."
[Associated
Press;
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