Saw this catching up on my Premiere reading. From the June issue, interview with Dustin Hoffman;

"I had heard about a place called the Pasadena Playhouse. I got selected, and I met Gene Hackman, who was on a GI bill scholarship. He had been in the Marines and he was a few years older, but we were bonded immediately as the antithesis of what the student body was like there... Gene got kicked out after three months for not having any talent. And he said he was going to New York, and when I finished two years there, I went to New York, stayed at Gene's apartment on the floor, and wouldn't leave because I was scared of New York. The only way to get rid of me was to find me a roommate. And he knew this guy Bob Duvall. We were basically three actors who were rejected over and over and over again. To the point where we would knock on the door in casting and slip an eight-by-ten glossy with our resume under the toor and run, because we just couldn't bear to go in and get rejected."