Hoffman is a 1970 British drama film directed by Alvin Rakoff and starring Peter Sellers, Sinéad Cusack, Ruth Dunning and Jeremy Bulloch.

[3] It is the tale of an older man who blackmails an attractive young woman into spending a week with him in his flat in London, hoping that she will forget her crooked fiancé and fall in love with him instead.

Telling her fiancé Tom that she must spend a week with her sick grandmother, Janet instead goes to the flat of Hoffman, a recently divorced executive whom she hardly knows from the firm where she works.

Her visit is not voluntary; Hoffman claims to have evidence that could send Tom to jail and has blackmailed her into spending the week with him.

Young and inexperienced, she eventually begins to fight back and even initiates some sexual provocation, insulting Hoffman when he does not respond.

Dismayed that Tom and his mother are more concerned for themselves than for her, Janet returns to Hoffman and negotiates the terms of his invitation to become his permanent companion.

In 1967 a televised play titled Call Me Daddy, starring Donald Pleasence and Judy Cornwell, was broadcast as part of the Armchair Theatre series.

[6]) In August 1969, production of the film was announced by Bryan Forbes, with Sinéad Cusack and Peter Sellers, for Associated British Picture Corporation.

[6] Director Alvin Rakoff claimed that Sellers had originally wanted to play the role comically, with an Austrian accent.

Arbeid said: "Benjamin Hoffman is very lonely, very insecure, very self-deprecating; and these were all terms used by people to describe the real Sellers.

[9] According to Bryan Forbes, "Unfortunately Peter entered into one of his manic depressive periods during the making of the film and immediately it was completed demanded to buy back the negative and remake it.

[20][2] Producer Ben Arbeid said: "He [Sellers] had ample opportunity to discuss the film with me before it was delivered to them as a finished piece.

[22] Arbeid added that the film received poor distribution, in part because of a conflict between Bryan Forbes and Bernard Delfont, head of EMI.

"[31] The Lancashire Telegraph called it "a strange little curate's egg of a film - a witty, well acted little story marred by a totally unbelievable central character and very peculiar red herrings in the plot.

"[32] The Daily Telegraph thought Sellers' character "could hardly be more unpleasant, though we are, it seems, supposed to feel sympathy for him... the piece is saved from disaster only by the directness and good judgment of Sinead Cusack.

"[33] Sight and Sound wrote " Some brightish nervous dialogue is spread pretty thinly over this stretched version of a more claustrophobic TV play.

It’s a creepy, rapey story in the vibe of something like The Collector about a middle aged man who kidnaps a younger woman… and she comes to fall for him… Sellers is excellent, so is Sinead Cusack, but it’s hard to make this sort of material anything other than unpleasant and surely even at inception, Forbes must have known this was a risk.