Dustin Hoffman the film director finds no room for writer Sir Ronald Harwood

Dustin Hoffman spoke about his directorial debut, Quartet, on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs last weekend in which Dame Maggie Smith, Sir Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins play ageing opera singers in a retirement home.

At a Q&A session after a recent Bafta screening of Quartet, the film’s creator and screenwriter, Sir Ronald Harwood, was asked about his relationship with Hoffman. He said he had had quite a few amiable meetings with the Hollywood star to discuss the screenplay prior to filming but then — much to his surprise — nothing.

Instead, Harwood had had to rely on his old friends Sir Tom and Dame Maggie phoning him from time to time to hear that everything was going well on set.

Harwood said he found it hard to deal with Hoffman’s non-communicative style during filming, contrasting this experience with working with the more talkative Roman Polanski on The Pianist and Oliver Twist.

Now that Quartet has wrapped, however, Harwood feels reassured by Hoffman’s debut as a director and is a strong advocate of the finished product. Thank goodness for that.