Dustin's rebirth

Dustin Hoffman is back in the game and wants you to know how happy he is about it. 'I didn't plan to be away this long,' he laughs, showing off a remarkably white set of teeth. 'But now I'm back, I feel like this is the most exciting time of my life.'

The cause of this once troubled star's newly discovered joy? There are many things, but first there's the aptly named Confidence, a clever little heist thriller in which he plays a violent gang chief with attention deficit disorder. The film has garnered Hoffman his best reviews since the 1997 political satire, Wag The Dog. It's not the lead --that's Ed Burns (Hoffman really hasn't carried a picture since 1998's Sphere) - but he has had the notices and stolen the best scene, a dark, sizzling flirtation with Rachel Weisz, in her element as seething bad girl Lily.

Weisz has been vocal about her adoration for Hoffman, and her hopes of making a romantic comedy with him - very flattering for any man of 66. Hoffman was of a mind to accept the challenge and never mind the cliche of older man/hot young actress. 'Well,' he says, 'there are certain actresses who seem more accessible to being seen with an older man. With Ingrid Bergman, for example, we'd accept it.'

Over the years, audiences have watched Hoffman commit far more dangerous acts on screen. He's earned his title as 'the actor's actor' from the moment he revolutionised Hollywood's idea --and ideal - of a leading man in The Graduate in 1967. His Benjamin Braddock was small, clearly Jewish and curiously offputting. Even Hoffman thought he was wrong for the role. 'I told the director, Mike Nichols, "He's a kind of Anglo-Saxon, tall, slender, good-looking chap,"' he laughs.

The part was a tour de force that paved the way for a generation of other unconventional leading men, like Pacino, Hackman and Duvall. And for a string of unconventional parts - the unheroic hero of Marathon Man, the driven thespian in drag in Tootsie, the feminised father in Kramer Vs Kramer. Hoffman's performances were brilliant but achieved at a cost. At the height of his box office power, he was surely one of the most detested stars in Hollywood.

Studio publicists said he was 'a perfectionist' - those on the set said he was a prick. When the famously laid-back Sydney Pollack picked up his Best Director Oscar for Tootsie in 1982, he couldn't help snapping, 'I'd give it up if I could have back the nine months of my life I spent with Dustin Hoffman'. Director Arthur Penn steered him through the prophetically titled Little Big Man and cited his 'inability to distinguish a pimple from a tumour'.

Hoffman, of course, sees it differently. 'We did have terrible fights on Tootsie,' he admits. 'But I honestly don't know if I'm difficult. I've done about 35 movies and only four of them were really difficult experiences.'

Of course, there's also the press to blame for his reputation. 'I remember reading how Tom Cruise and I were two big egos holding up shooting on Rain Man. I know that isn't true, but if I just picked up the paper, I'd believe it. That's interesting isn't it? But then it's like the fact that a lot of actors took as many drugs as Jack Nicholson did in the Seventies. And Warren Beatty was no more promiscuous than a lot of us during those days.'

Beatty, of course, became the playboy of the Western world, Hoffman the nitpicking perfectionist. Even in his new state of spiritual peace, he still bristles slightly at the tag. 'I don't know any star - the word star meaning someone who can ask for rewrites --who doesn't ask for rewrites.'

Anyhow, he adds, that's all in the past. He's had a breakthrough and more recent co-stars can attest to it. Ask Susan Sarandon, who told anyone who would listen last year that she had adored working with him on Moonlight Mile. And Rene Russo, his co-star in 1995's Outbreak, insists, 'He wasn't a pain in the ass for me. His following something through to the end is part of his genius. He's the funniest person I've ever worked with.'