Aurelio Muraca

Dustin Hoffman says he was hesitant to correct a seriously ill Laurence Olivier while filming Marathon Man, despite knowing his performance was going over the top. Conan O’Brien admits he never realized how sick Olivier was. “He’s essentially dying. He knows it, and he’s on a lot of pain medication. There’s cancer throughout his body. He had trouble getting insurance for the film.” Hoffman recalls Olivier going over the top during a scene, but the director was afraid to correct him. “He says, ‘I know he’s over the top, but I’m not going to tell the greatest actor in the world. If you want to, you can.’” So Hoffman approached him, knowing how much the medication was affecting him. “Here’s a guy who had Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear committed to memory, word by word, and now he can’t put four words together because of the medication.” Hoffman also couldn’t bring himself to call him Larry, so he came up with the nickname “Lordage.” During a private conversation, Olivier finally asked him: “So you think I’m playing a little too big? Am I over the top?” Olivier’s response still gets to him. “He looks at me and says, ‘Thank you,’ after a long beat, eyeball to eyeball. It makes me emotional and we were very close after that.”