Film legend Dustin Hoffman said the chances of a movie being a hit are the same if it is directed by an icon like Mike Nichols or a relative newcomer like Joel Hopkins, who directed Hoffman in his latest movie, "Last Chance Harvey."

"You always take a deep breath no matter who the director is," Hoffman said in a recent @ The Movies interview. "I always say that if you don't go into a movie scared, you're not looking at reality because most movies don't work. They just don't. You need a little bit of luck because most movies taxi down the tarmac and they don't get lift off -- and you don't even know why."

In "Last Chance Harvey," Hoffman plays a divorced, down-on-his-luck jingle writer who heads from New York to London to attend his estranged daughter's wedding -- where he meets a sheltered woman (Emma Thompson) who may be his last chance at finding love again.

The romantic drama pairs the Oscar-winning performers in a film for the second time. But unlike the two brief, but memorable scenes they shared in the 2006 Will Ferrell comedy "Stranger Than Fiction," Hoffman and Thompson are in considerably more scenes together -- giving the two a much bigger opportunity to display their magnetic screen chemistry.

"We were sad at the end of that film because we thought that we worked well together, so we asked each other when we parted, 'Wouldn't it be nice to be in a whole movie together?' A year later she called me and said she knew Joel Hopkins and mentioned to him that we were looking for something," Hoffman said. "So he came up with this project and the three of us worked on it together. We shot it on location in London with a low budget and no pressure. There were no demands. Nobody was coming to the set every day saying, 'This better be a hit.'"

"Last Chance Harvey" lifts off into theaters in limited release on Dec. 25 and will expand to more theaters beginning Jan. 9.

The "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "Rain Man" Oscar winner, 71, recently provided the voice to kung fu trainer Master Shifu in the animated blockbuster "Kung Fu Panda."