Photo: S_Bukley / Shutterstock
He's starring in his first film.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Sep 03, 2020
Academy Award-winning actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman passed away in 2014, leaving behind his partner Mimi O'Donnell and their three children. At the time, his son Cooper Hoffman was only 11 years old and his sisters, Tallulah and Will, were 8 and 6 respectively. In the years since he lost his father, Cooper Hoffman has lived a private life with his mother and sisters.
Who is Phillip Seymour Hoffman's son, Cooper Hoffman?
Now, at 17 years old, Hoffman is making his first foray in the world of acting. He is starring in an untitled project about coming of age in the 1970s, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Anderson worked with Cooper's father on multiple projects during this lifetime. This will be the younger Hoffman's movie debut.
Read on to learn more about him.
Cooper Hoffman the child of industry insiders.
Hoffman's dad is well known for his long resume of acting roles, both on stage and on screen. His mother, on the other hand, is less visible in Hollywood, though just as experienced in movies and theatre. Mimi O'Donnell is a costume designer and director. She actually met Phillip Seymour Hoffman when he interviewed her to do the costumes for a play he was directing at Labyrinth Theatre Company in New York.
The couple fell in love after working together, though they never actually married. They had Cooper in 2003 and O'Donnell remembered his birth as being a moment of incredible pride for both of them. She wrote that Hoffman had been so excited that he tried to carry the baby out of the delivery room to meet their families waiting outside. It was only when a nurse stopped him that he realized he couldn't do that.
Where did Phillip Seymour Hoffman's son grow up?
The family had its base in New York City, where both of the parents worked on stage productions, though they often traveled to film sets around the world. O'Donnell recalls that they made it a point never to spend more than two weeks apart so Cooper and his sisters got to go to wherever their parents happened to be working.
His mom kept him out of the spotlight.
In the years since his father's death, Hoffman and his sisters have been living very private lives. Their mother doesn't have public social media accounts and neither does Hoffman at this time. Since he's still under 18 years old, that makes a lot of sense. We assume he was going to school in New York all this time, but the press left him alone.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman left Cooper Hoffman out of his will.
In one of the more shocking revelations after Phillip Seymour Hoffman died, the world learned that he left his entire estate to O'Donnell and not his children. That wasn't a move made out of neglect or cruelty; he didn't want his kids to grow up to be trust fund babies who never had to work for anything.
Now, Cooper Hoffman is trying his hand at acting.
If Hoffman wanted to study acting, he would have had every resource available to him. As the son of industry pros who had contacts with on both coasts, he would have been able to have his pick of acting programs to choose from. We don't know where he went to study the craft but we do know that he has just been cast in his first feature film. Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed movies like Boogie Nights and The Master, has cast Hoffman in his upcoming (but still untitled) movie about a child actor coming of age in 1970s California. The film also reportedly stars Bradley Cooper and singer Alana Haim.
An unattributed photo from the set of the new film.
Paul Thomas Anderson knew Cooper Hoffman's father.
Cooper Hoffman will be the second generation of Hoffmans to work with Anderson. Phillip Seymour Hoffman worked with the director four previous times. Their last collaboration was The Master in 2012, two years before Hoffman passed away. Cooper Hoffman would have been 9 years old at the time and given his family's habit of traveling to film sets, he probably had the chance to meet Anderson during filming.
Hoffman is reportedly filming in the San Fernando Valley right now. No word on when the film will get a release date.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.