Quick answer: On SmartLess, a host tells Dustin Hoffman that, as a young actor studying at the Strasberg institute in New York in the early 1990s, he and his roommates looked up to the story of Hoffman, Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman living together. Hoffman does not repeat the word "roommates." He says, "we also we were friends and we hung out together and we were unemployed for almost 10 years." Asked whether they ever let themselves think they would have the careers they had, he answers, "No. Never, never, never." In their day, he says, leading men looked like Rock Hudson or Tab Hunter, until the 1960s changed what audiences wanted from men on screen. "We didn't expect anything."
Clip: Viral Podcast Shorts YouTube Short from the full source linked below.
The official YouTube title of the November 9, 2026, episode is Dustin Hoffman | SmartLess. The show is hosted by Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett. This article stays with the early-career exchange used in the Viral Podcast Shorts clip. There is not yet a RealNameOf page for Hoffman or Hackman. A Robert Duvall page is live.
"We were unemployed for almost 10 years"
The prompt is the host's. One of the hosts says that when he and his roommates "were living in New York studying at Strasberg in the early 90s," they used to talk about Hoffman having been "roommates with Robert Duvall and Gene Hackman back in the day." "These guys all lived together. They were doing it," and "in some way it allowed us to dream."
Hoffman's reply is more modest than that setup. "We also we were friends and we hung out together and we were unemployed for almost 10 years." He does not, in this cut, say they shared an apartment or date the stretch of unemployment. The roommate claim in the clip belongs to the host.
"Never, never, never"
The host asks how much, back then, "did you ever allow yourselves to think that you'd have the careers that you would? Did you talk about it?"
"No. Never, never, never."
The reason he gives is about the look of movie stars. "In our day," he says, "there were actors that had a different look. They didn't look like members of the audience." Then, "when we came about," "suddenly the taste changed. It wasn't Rock Hudson or Tab Hunter or these good-looking leading men." He ties that shift to "Jack Kerouac living in the moment the '60s." The phrasing is his, and a little tangled in the captions; this article does not turn it into a film-history claim.
What changed, he says, was what men in the audience wanted to see. "The guys in the audience wanted to see people on the screen that looked like them." He does not think the same was true for women: "Women always had to be beautiful." That is his account, not a finding of this article. "So we never thought about that."
The teachers, and fights on the street
What they did argue about, he says, was school. "We argued, we fought bitterly over whose teacher was better." His, he says, "was Strasberg." In the same sentence he names "Sandy Meisner" with Duvall and "George Morrison" as "Gene Hackman's." Official auto-captions are a bit tangled on the Duvall/Meisner wording; the sense of the list is that those were the three teachers they were arguing over.
"There were violent fights." He describes Duvall standing on the street, dismissing sense memory and dismissing Meisner improvisation in turn. The Short masks the profanity in that outburst, and this article does not restore it. "We were like angry." The clip ends on, "We didn't expect anything." In the full episode he keeps talking after that about performances they thought were bad; the Short stops here, and so does this article.
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FAQ
### Does Hoffman say he was roommates with Hackman and Duvall?
Not in this clip. A host says they were roommates who "all lived together." Hoffman says they "were friends and we hung out together and we were unemployed for almost 10 years."
Did they expect the careers they later had?
He says no: "Never, never, never." And later, "we didn't expect anything."
Why does he say they didn't see themselves as leading men?
He says stars in their day "didn't look like members of the audience," naming Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter as the "good-looking leading men," until, in the 1960s, "the guys in the audience wanted to see people on the screen that looked like them."
Whose acting teachers does he name?
He says his teacher was Strasberg, names Sandy Meisner with Duvall, and says George Morrison was Gene Hackman's. He says they "fought bitterly" over whose teacher was better.