When Dustin Hoffman showed up at producer Joseph E. Levine's office for a casting interview, Levine mistook him for a window cleaner. So Hoffman, in character, cleaned a window.
During rehearsals of Dustin Hoffman's and Anne Bancroft's first encounter in the hotel room, Bancroft did not know that Hoffman was going to grab her breast. Hoffman decided to do it because it reminded him of schoolboys trying to nonchalantly grab girls' breasts in the hall by pretending to put their jackets on. When Hoffman did it, director Mike Nichols began laughing loudly. Hoffman began to laugh as well, so rather than stop the scene, he turned away and walked to the wall. Hoffman banged his head on the wall, trying to stop laughing, and Nichols thought it was so funny, it stayed in the finished film.
Robert Redford screen tested with Candice Bergen for the part of Benjamin Braddock, but he was finally rejected by director Mike Nichols. Nichols did not believe Redford could persuasively project the underdog qualities necessary to the role. When he told this to Redford, Redford asked Nichols what he meant. "Well, let's put it this way", said Nichols, "Have you ever struck out with a girl?" "What do you mean?" asked Redford. "That's precisely my point," said Nichols. Redford told Nichols that he perfectly understood the character of Benjamin, who was a social misfit. He went on and on about his ability to play the part. Nichols finally said to him, "Bob, look in the mirror. Can you honestly imagine a guy like you having difficulty seducing a woman?" The link between Nichols and Redford began when Nichols directed his first Broadway play "Barefoot in the Park", starring the then little-known Redford.
With domestic box office receipts of just over $104 million, this was the highest-grossing film of 1967. It was only the third film in history to gross over $100 million domestically, after Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Sound of Music (1965).
Anne Bancroft loved Mike Nichols's description of Mrs. Robinson as someone who was angry with herself for giving up on who she really was in exchange for wealth and security. This was the aspect of the book that really captured his interest. When they shot the scene where Mrs. Robinson and Ben discuss art in the hotel room, Bancroft had forgotten Nichols's initial revelation about the character, but she managed to capture that anger and regret on subsequent takes. Nichols thought this was very important because she really wanted to drive home the point about the character having bargained away her life. "That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it."