“The long walk” Star Cooper Hoffman has opened up to follow the footsteps of his convicted father Philip Seymour Hoffman, whom the young star called his “favorite actor.”
Hoffman, who debuted on the screen 2021 “Lakrit pizza,” told GQ In an interview published on Tuesday, he originally planned to avoid Hollywood and act completely. “I wanted to do everything except acting, in principle,” he revealed and noted that he was considering becoming a fashion designer instead. “I wanted to go to Central Saint Martins.”
The actor could of course not think about acting without thinking of his father, who remains one of the most revered artists in his generation, despite passing away 11 years since 2014 when his son was only 10 years old. In the end, it was “Lakrit pizza” author-director Paul Thomas Anderson, who worked several times with Hoffman’s father, who convinced him to give acting.
Several years later, Hoffman has appeared, thanks to his performances in projects such as “Lakrit pizza” and “Saturday Night”, as one of Hollywood’s rising stars. As he prepared earlier this year to perform in an off-Broadway re-life of Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class,” Hoffman, however, told GQ that he was thinking about his father again.
“The only person I really wanted to talk to was my dad,” he said. “He’s my favorite actor, but he’s also my dad. He’s not here either.”
“Many people idolize their parents because they are fantastic parents,” Hoffman continued. “It’s another thing to idolize your parent because you love their art. As much as I would love he would be here and talk to him about acting, I would also be terrified to make him see my things and judge my things. Not because he would judge it, because he was a very empathic person, and he probably – hold my hand.”
In his new film, director Francis Lawrence Stephen King’s adaptation “The Long Walk”, Hoffman, plays a young man who grieves the sudden loss of his father. The parallels between him and his character were not lost at Hoffman, who was asked by GQ whether he had any unrest to take the role or not.
“Oh my God, how can you not?” Hoffman answered. “How can you not see with bold letters,” his dad died “? It will only be there.”
Hoffman intentionally tried to take his audition for “The Long Walk” by reading his lines from his phone instead of memorizing them, but the action of self -sabotage did not work. In the end, Hoffman decided that it may be worth exploring some of his own, personal feelings of grief on the screen.
“When your trauma is shown to the world, there is nothing to hide it,” explained the young star. “I am like, I might as well talk about it, or, I might as well put it in something. Because if I keep hiding it and run from it, it is not fair to someone else who has gone through it. I am here to show this person and this experience as honest I can, and hopefully someone else looks at it and goes,” he sees me. ‘And in my opinion it is the only reason to do some kind of art. “
“I get to find out on my own,” Hoffman added and further reflected on going the same career path as his father. “But also, I would love his advice. And I would also just love my dad.”
“The Long Walk” will meet theaters on September 12.
