Cooper Hoffman had never wanted to act. In elementary school, he joined in the plays but only helped out backstage. When it was time for cast and crew to take a bow, he remembers staying as far out of view as he could, or hiding in the bathroom.
But the very first time that Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, read in a casual, let’s-just-see, not-really-official audition for “Licorice Pizza” with writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson and his eventual co-star Alana Haim, something clicked.
“I don’t think I ever really considered it a possibility. I was always kind of scared to enter that arena because my dad did it so well,” Hoffman says. “But the second I read with Paul and Alana, I kind of got so emotional. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I need to do this.’”
By the time Hoffman, 18, was filming “Licorice Pizza,” he was struck by how comfortable it felt, even though it was his first film. Here he was doing the thing he had long avoided, and loving it. A decade after Hoffman’s father had been a fixture in Anderson’s films (“The Master,” “Magnolia,” “Boogie Nights,” “Hard Eight”), his oldest son was taking his place on another Anderson set.
