Hackman was fired from 'The Graduate'

NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Dustin Hoffman recalled in New Orleans new conference how his "Runaway Jury" co-star Gene Hackman was fired from the 1967 film, "The Graduate."

"Gene was cast as Mr. Robinson and we were in the third week of rehearsal ... and Gene and I were in the Paramount (movie studio) bathroom," Hoffman told reporters.

"He looks over at me ... saying, 'I'm going to get fired,'" Hoffman explained. "And I said, 'What are you talking about?' And he said: 'I'm getting fired today. I can feel it.' And he did and that opened his career up because Warren Beatty put him in 'Bonnie and Clyde.' And that, I think, had a tremendous impact on his career."

"I got fired, I think, because I just didn't fulfill the director and writer's idea of what the part should have been," Hackman said. "The way we were all trained in the 1950s and 1960s, you needed to keep searching and kicking it around, so I was doing that and I just took too much time."