You may not know his real name, but you know his face: Jonathan Goldsmith is “The Most Interesting Man in the World” in commercials for Dos Equis beer. Now, he’s hoping to change that with his new memoir called Stay Interesting: I Don’t Always Tell Stories About My Life, But When I Do, They’re True and Amazing. (Want to become the most interesting man to your friends? Here are 30 tips you can use to live a cooler life.)
In book excerpts obtained by the New York Post, Goldsmith, 78, details his Hollywood experience—including run-ins with a few famous actors. According to Goldsmith, Dustin Hoffman was an enemy early in his career. “Dustin Hoffman and I never got along,” he writes, noting that they often competed for roles. “He was serious, somber, a student of the craft. I was more light-hearted . . . more social oriented than Dustin.” Things finally came to a head after the two worked together on a production called “A Cook for Mr. General, when Goldsmith told Hoffman that he was just jealous of him because “I’m going to make it and you’re not”—words he definitely ate down the road.
He also writes that he and Clint Eastwood had issues when they appeared in the 1968 western “Hang ’Em High." Goldsmith had a fling with Eastwood’s then-girlfriend on the set, which obviously didn’t go over well. That wasn’t Goldsmith’s first affair. He says he also slept with “Jack Warner’s much younger girlfriend, one of Groucho Marx’s wives . . . two congressmen’s wives, and one runner-up to Miss Florida” and even “broke Henry Fonda’s mistress’ bed.”
But Goldsmith also says he had hard times. By the time he auditioned for Dos Equis, he was homeless, sleeping in the back of a pickup truck, and showering where he could. He writes that he almost didn’t audition for the role since the company was looking for a young Latino man, which he clearly wasn’t.
In the audition, Goldsmith says casting agents asked him to improvise a monologue that ended with “and that’s how I arm-wrestled Fidel Castro,” so he channeled his friend, Argentinian actor Fernando Lamas. He told them how he was a hunter and stumbled on a village of women doing laundry by a river, and how he “f**ked them all.” Finally, the story ended with Castro challenging him to a duel after he slept with one of the women he was involved with. By the end of the day, he became "The Most Interesting Man in the World." Clearly, he's led a life to back up the title.
