Tootsie - Plot

Plot

Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) is a respected but perfectionist actor. Nobody in New York wants to hire him anymore because it is difficult to work with him. According to his long-suffering agent George Fields (Sydney Pollack), Michael's attention to detail and difficult reputation got him fired from playing a tomato in a television commercial, because the idea of a tomato sitting down was "illogical" to him. After many months without a job, Michael hears of an opening on the soap opera Southwest General from his friend and acting student Sandy Lester (Teri Garr), who tries out for the role of hospital administrator but doesn't get it. In desperation, he dresses as a woman, auditions as "Dorothy Michaels" and wins the part. Michael takes the job as a way to raise $8,000 to produce a play written by his roommate Jeff Slater (Bill Murray), entitled Return To Love Canal. Michael plays his character as a feisty, feminist administrator, which surprises the other actors and crew who expected her to be another swooning female in the plot. Over time, however, his character becomes a television sensation.

When Sandy catches Michael in her bedroom half undressed (he wanted to try on her clothes in order to get more ideas for Dorothy's outfits), he covers up by professing he wants to have sex with her. They have sex despite his better judgment about her self-esteem issues. Michael believes Sandy is too emotionally fragile to handle the truth about him winning the part of Dorothy, especially after noticing her strong resentment of Dorothy getting the part. Their relationship, combined with his deception, complicates his now busy schedule. Exacerbating matters further, he is strongly attracted to one of his co-stars, lovely, soft-spoken Julie Nichols (Jessica Lange), a single mother in an unhealthy relationship with the show's amoral, sexist director, Ron Carlisle (Dabney Coleman). At a party, when Michael (as himself) approaches Julie with a line that she had previously told Dorothy to which she would be receptive, she throws a drink in his face. Later, as Dorothy, when he makes tentative advances, Julie is shocked and later tells Dorothy that she likes "her," but not in a romantic way.

Meanwhile, Dorothy has her own admirers to contend with: older cast member John Van Horn (George Gaynes) and Julie's widowed father Les (Charles Durning). John follows Dorothy home and almost forces himself on her, stopped only by Jeff walking in on them. Les even proposes marriage. Jeff and George are in on the masquerade and watch in amazement as the situation escalates out of control. The tipping point comes when, due to Dorothy's popularity, the show's producers want to extend her contract for another year. Michael finds a clever way to extricate himself. When the cast is forced to perform the show live, he improvises a grand speech on camera, pulls off his wig and reveals that he is actually the character's twin brother who took her place to avenge her. Sandy, Les and Jeff, who are all watching at home, have varying reactions of shock, the exception being Jeff, who simply remarks, "That... is one nutty hospital." The revelation allows everybody a more-or-less graceful way out. Julie, however, is so outraged that she slugs him in the stomach off-camera. Some weeks later, Michael awkwardly makes peace with Les in a bar, and Les shows tentative support for Michael's attraction to Julie. Later, Michael waits for Julie outside the studio. Julie resists talking but finally admits she misses Dorothy. When he confesses that "I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man", she forgives him and they walk off, Julie asking him to lend her a dress.