Dustin Hoffman Shares His Journey from Acting Teacher to Star and Advice for Newcomers

Dustin Hoffman taught acting long before he became one of Hollywood’s most celebrated stars.

“I still think about it if acting doesn’t work out,” Hoffman, 88 laughs in a joint interview with his Tuner costar Leo Woodall. The pair play a duo of piano tuners in the new film; Woodall’s character Niki goes to drastic lengths to make money for his mentor after Hoffman’s character Harry lands in the hospital.

Hoffman made his big‑screen debut in 1967 with The Tiger Makes Out and the classic The Graduate, after years of bit parts on television. “I thought I would teach acting, which I actually did after studying for eight, nine years without getting anything, which a lot of actors do,” he tells PEOPLE. “By that time you know enough about acting that you can teach it. It was a very good profession when you could get $5 from each person.”

“Most actors don’t work for the first five or six years,” he adds. “If you get a job after five years, you say, ‘Oh, wow, you’re working right away.’ ”

As Woodall notes, Hoffman played a struggling actor who teaches classes to make ends meet in the 1982 film Tootsie. He told PEOPLE that he suggested to director Sydney Pollack that the movie open with his character teaching a class.

“I literally called my best friend at that time, Jack Waltzer, who’s an actor and teaches acting. I said, ‘Can you send over your entire class?’ And he did,” Hoffman recalls. “He sent his entire class over and they came over and we just improvised that scene.”