ABSTRACT
Yes and no! Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man character is autistic. The character has extraordinary, ‘savant’ mathematical and memory abilities. The film, released in 1988, was one of the first to portray autism and raise awareness of the condition. However, only a very, very small percentage of people with an ASC actually have these sort of savant abilities and talents! Autism is considered to be a ‘spectrum’ condition, and people along this spectrum can be very different. No two people with autism have exactly the same strengths and difficulties. So, if you watch a film or television show about a person on the autism spectrum, they are likely to be quite different from other people with autism who you might meet.
