bitchy | Cooper Hoffman: ‘The only person I really wanted to talk to was my dad’

While I wasn’t wild about Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, it made me super-emotional all the same. That was because of Cooper Hoffman, the only son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman (Cooper has two sisters, just FYI). PSH was, in my mind, the greatest actor of his generation. PSH was also a constant collaborator with Paul Thomas Anderson, and I was so moved that PTA hired Cooper for that role in Licorice Pizza, a role which really showcased Cooper’s talents and his similarities to his father. While there’s a physical resemblance between father and son, the craziest thing is that Cooper SOUNDS so much like his father.

Well, Cooper is immediately 22 years old and a somewhat established young actor. He’s currently promoting his role in The Long Walk, an adaptation of the Stephen King novel. He works closely with David Jonsson in the project, and the two actors cover the new issue of GQ Hype. In the interview, Cooper was asked about his father, and I once again got super-emotional.

Cooper Hoffman was determined not to be an actor. “I wanted to do everything but act, basically,” he says. The legacy of his father, who died in 2014 when Cooper was 10, loomed large. He even entertained the idea of becoming a fashion designer. “I wanted to go to, like, Central Saint Martins,” he says of his teenage whims, referring to the famous London fashion school.

Instead, at 17, an age when his peers were getting ready for college, he was urged by family friend P.T.A. to audition for Licorice Pizza. He nailed the part, suddenly announcing himself as a major talent and jump-starting a career.

Hoffman says he had his own version of college doing several movies—Licorice Pizza, Wildcat, Old Guy, and Saturday Night—in quick succession. Early this year came the final exam: making his stage debut in an off-Broadway revival of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class. “I was like, I’m so ill-prepared for this,” he says.

He found himself thinking about his father. “The only person I really wanted to talk to was my dad,” he says.

“He’s my favorite actor, but he’s also my dad,” Hoffman continues. “He’s also not here. A lot of people idolize their parents because they’re great parents. It’s a different thing to idolize your parent because you love their art. So as much as I would love him to be here and talk to him about acting, I also would be terrified to have him see my stuff and judge my stuff. Not that he would judge it, because he was a very empathetic person, and he would probably — hopefully— hold my hand through all of it.”

“I get to figure this out on my own,” he says. “But also, I would love his advice. And I would also just love my dad.”

[From GQ Hype]

Excuse me while I sob in the corner. Cooper doesn’t shy away from talking about losing his dad, and obviously, he’s stepping into a profession where so many of his future directors and costars knew and loved his father too. That’s something I find interesting, how many connections there are already in Cooper’s career, and how many men in the industry have already reached out to Cooper. There’s a sense that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s closest friends and coworkers are fully prepared to look out for Cooper. He’s even worked with Ethan Hawke already, and Ethan LOVED his father. Same with Francis Lawrence, who directed The Long Walk – Lawrence had worked with PSH. And obviously, Paul Thomas Anderson started this whole thing.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, cover courtesy of GQ Hype.