Dustin Hoffman confesses he was held at gunpoint while in bed with married woman: ‘I’m gonna die’

Dustin Hoffman, 89, revealed on the November 9 episode of the "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" podcast that he once faced a gun-wielding husband during an affair in his youth. Promoting his memoir "Look at Me," Hoffman told host Conan O'Brien, "I was having an affair with a married woman. She thought that once her husband went to asleep, that he stayed asleep." He said he was invited to the woman's home after the husband had presumably gone to bed. "There we are, having a festival of sorts, and he walked in with a gun," Hoffman recalled. "He pointed it at me and he said, I remember what he said, 'Get out, get out.'" Hoffman described the moment: "When you have a gun pointed at you, you realize how, any second, any second he's going to pull that trigger. His finger is on the trigger and you think any second he's going to. You realize, 'That's it, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die, the next second, the next second, the next second.'" He added, "You will do anything to avoid getting killed." The Norwich Evening News reported Hoffman's similar phrasing: "When you have a gun pointed at you, first of all, that hole is much bigger than the actual hole. And you realise how, any second, any second, he's going to pull that trigger, because his finger is on the trigger. And you think … and you realise, it's it … I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die the next second." The interview also covered Hoffman's early New York years. He moved there in 1958 at age 21 and lived briefly with Gene Hackman and Hackman's first wife, Faye Maltese, sleeping on their kitchen floor next to a noisy refrigerator. After the Hackmans asked him to leave, Hackman advised him to knock on doors along Riverside Drive to find a superintendent; Hoffman walked from 60th Street and Central Park West to the Hudson River and back, eventually renting a top-floor apartment in Spanish Harlem for $80 a month. Robert Duvall became a roommate. Hoffman said the three aspiring actors had "rowdy nights" with pizza, unemployed actors, candles in chianti bottles, Hackman playing piano and Duvall singing country songs. He was paid $3,000 for his breakout role in "The Graduate" (1967) and afterward waited in an unemployment line for a $55 check, a moment captured by Life magazine. Hoffman has won two Academy Awards, four BAFTAs, five Golden Globes and two Emmys. He married Anna Byrne in 1969, adopted her daughter Karina and had daughter Jenna; they divorced in 1980, and he married Lisa Gottsegen the same year.