You could say that fate brought movie actor Dustin Hoffman and his wife, Lisa Hoffman, together, considering the way they met.
And things have worked out well for the couple since that moment.
The couple hit it off from their first interaction and have been together ever since. On October 12, 2022, the two celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary. They still walk arm in arm and continue to be in love.
Dustin and his wife Lisa have proven that love exists, as they have been married for over four decades and have one of the longest lasting marriages in Hollywood.
“I say, in Hollywood, it’s like dog years, so you have to multiply that by seven,” the businesswoman joked about their union in an interview with Closer Weekly in 2017.
Lisa added that, after being married for so long, she and her husband are too much in love and their affection for each other “continues to grow.”
She also revealed the secret of their happy union and of still being in love after all these years. In addition, she shared that she always knew she would spend her life together with the filmmaker.
“We worked hard on that. I knew I was going to be with Dusty and that I would live my life together with him,” she said.
Currently, the Hoffmans spend most of their time in Los Angeles and own homes in New York and London.
Dustin himself said several years ago, “We’ve been together for almost 30 years and the scary thing is that it feels like we’ve only been together for a week.”
The couple’s marriage may seem perfect, but they’ve been through a lot together as husband and wife to keep it intact.
How they met
The couple were born and raised in Los Angeles, where Dustin’s mother and Lisa’s grandmother were friends and lived in the same apartment block.
Lisa shared that her future spouse was studying to be a classical pianist before pursuing an acting career. When he was sixteen, he was a pianist at her parents’ wedding when her mother was pregnant with her.
The lovebirds joked that she must have heard him play and fell in love at the time. After Dustin went to New York to study theater, Lisa used to see him every year when she visited his family.
One particular event occurred when he was about 27. Lisa said she felt embarrassed to be around adults at a party and hanging out with them. She was ten years old at the time.
He told jokes, played the piano and encouraged little Lisa to dance around the room. She remembered something she told her grandmother after that meeting:
“My grandmother reminded me that later that day, I had told her, ‘I hope he waits for me because I want to marry him.’”
Lisa had to wait about twelve years until she turned 22 and Dustin 38. It was around the time he was divorcing his first wife, actress Anne Byrne, known for “Manhattan”.
One day, when Lisa’s grandfather died, Dustin went to pay his condolences. At that time they had not seen each other for several years. However, their feelings for each other were still strong, and from their first date, they knew they were going to get married.
“That first look, and I knew. Dustin asked how many kids I wanted. I said six, and he said he already had two, so four would be fine. And that’s exactly how it played out,” she recounted.
She had just started law school and decided to complete her degree regardless. Lisa knew that practicing would be impossible once she started traveling with the actor, now 84.
So she opted to complete her qualification first. The couple married in 1980 and she graduated a year later at the age of 25.
For this woman, now 68, the comfort is in their family connections. Her husband always recalls memorable stories about his wife’s relatives: her grandfather’s jokes and the fishing trips they took before she was born.
Lisa shared that she got a lot of information about her grandparents’ and her mother’s lives. She, for her part, had known Dustin’s mother since childhood. She added that she still had a keepsake she gave him when he was born.
Health problems of her first child.
Years later, Lisa gave birth to their first child together, Jake, who was born with complications. He came into the world three weeks after she took the bar exam.
The mother explained that her firstborn, who is now 41 years old, had been born a month before full term and suffered from hyaline membrane disease. Because of this, being a mom became Lisa’s focus.
They went on to have three more children: Rebecca, Max and Alexandra. For the next two decades, the family traveled the world, accompanying the actor wherever he went.
“Our values are traditional. It was important to Dustin that we were together as a family. For both of us, that was the whole point of being married,” Lisa said.
The actor’s children
Dustin’s oldest daughter is Karina, who is currently 56 years old. He adopted her when he married Anne Byrne, his first wife. Not much is known about Karina, as she stays away from the spotlight.
Then their daughter, Jenna, now 51, was born, who is the actor’s biological daughter with Byrne. She followed him into show business and became an actress. The mother of two has appeared in several films, including “Outbreak”.
Dustin’s third son, Jake, born in 1981 from his union with Lisa, is one of Dustin’s most famous sons. The director followed in his father’s footsteps and has starred in films such as “Click”.
The second daughter of the famous actor and Lisa, Rebecca, was born in 1983. She later appeared with her father in “Hook”. However, she did not continue acting after that. The 38-year-old studied at Barnard College in New York.
The couple’s third child is 38-year-old Max. He was born in 1984 in Los Angeles and attended Brown University in 2007. Then he studied abroad, in Prague.
The last one born in the family is Alexandra, who came into the world in 1987. She is also an actress. The 35-year-old appeared in 2002’s “Moonlight Mile.”
Lisa has coped with her husband’s fame and managed to stay out of the spotlight. Now she has dedicated herself to exercising her career, because her offspring has left the nest. Lisa shared that she could not work while raising her children because she decided to prioritize them.
“I couldn’t work when I was raising the kids because my life was dedicated to them. So this is an exciting time to get to know me differently,” she said.
She launched her skin care line called Lisa Hoffman Beauty. With the help of a consultant from the beauty industry, she found a leading US skin care specialist in the USA. UU. to help her realize her ideas.
Lisa said she did some research on her own to get an idea of what she was looking for. The mum-of-four now has her Night & Day skincare system.