Cooper Hoffman on The Long Walk, His Father’s Legacy and Acting Challenges

“You got your license, and you got handed the keys to a Lamborghini.’”

That’s what a friend’s father told Cooper Hoffman when he was cast in 2021’s “Licorice Pizza.” And the joy ride lived up to it. In his debut role, Hoffman was a leading man, starring in a feature directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. He notched a Golden Globe nod for his performance. He was just 18 years old, but Hoffman says he “felt like an adult” soaking up the acclaim. 

“I kind of thought I was hot shit,” he admits. Then, as he puts it, he got “hit by a truck of insecurity.” 

Hoffman wasn’t a total stranger to the industry. His father is the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. His mother, Mimi O’Donnell, was previously the artistic director of Labyrinth Theater Company, where she also directed and produced several stage productions. But while Hoffman was often surrounded by talented actors growing up in New York City, he realized that he would still have to clarify his own relationship to the world they all worked in.

“I was like, ‘Oh, I have no idea what I’m doing at all.’ But I was very certain that I was going to figure it out,” Hoffman says. Then he adds, “By the way, I still don’t know what I’m doing. I’m still trying my best.” 

Now 22 years old, the sandy-haired Hoffman hasn’t just regained more confident footing; he’s positioned as one of the film industry’s most promising young actors. On Sept. 12, Lionsgate releases the survival thriller “The Long Walk,” a years-in-the-works adaptation of Stephen King’s first written novel. Headlining in his second-ever lead role, Hoffman achieves a gripping star turn, keeping the film inviting and alive even as his character, the fiercely determined Ray Garraty, endures the extremes of despair.

The horror story follows Garraty as he competes in a contest with one simple rule: keep walking at a speed above three miles per hour. If you slow down, you get a warning. After three warnings, you are shot. The premise is simple, but its physical demands speak for themselves.

“Jesus, we went like 15 miles a day in 100-degree weather. There are moments where you’re forced to be method actors,” Hoffman says, before shrugging. “Whatever ‘method’ means to people. But we are walking. No one is faking that. And it is exhausting.”

A bout of heat rash and many cold baths later, Hoffman is now in Los Angeles, kicking off what will be his most dedicated press tour yet. On “Licorice Pizza,” he only did a handful of interviews, protected by Anderson from the draining gauntlet of awards season. But he’s older now, and, for “The Long Walk,” he’ll do many more.

“We have a ‘global custom content’ day tomorrow,” he tells me, carefully recalling the exact industry terminology. “Never done one of those.” 

Soon, Hoffman flies out to shoot a supporting role on Luca Guadagnino’s “Artificial,” a ripped-from-the-headlines look at OpenAI’s controversial CEO Sam Altman. Then he’ll haul himself to the Toronto International Film Festival next month for the premiere of Maude Apatow’s debut feature “Poetic License,” in which he plays a college student vying for the affections of a married woman.

It’s a busy pace, and Hoffman is still feeling out the rhythms of it — particularly with people like me. We meet at Chateau Marmont, where his father used to stay when visiting Los Angeles. Sipping his iced Americano in the hotel restaurant, Hoffman admits that he had some trepidations about our conversation.

“I’ve just started doing this stuff. I don’t know how I’m doing it, but it’s the first time,” Hoffman says. “The thing that’s nice about movies is that you get to fall on the crutch of there being a character. It’s not you. But this stuff is me.”

I bring up social media, and that it’s largely become an industry expectation for young actors to court a digital following to promote new projects. Hoffman has opted out of putting that spotlight on his private life, calling it a “hard line that I hope will stand.” 

“It’s so annoying to say, but my character has to come before me in this,” he says. “I would love to be a blank slate, even if I’m not going to be. I’m not already — that’s the thing.” 

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Dystopian teenage massacres aren’t exactly new territory for “The Long Walk” director Francis Lawrence. He’s been the steady hand behind “The Hunger Games” franchise since 2013 and is currently prepping the prequel “Sunrise on the Reaping.”

But unlike those high fantasy, world-building blockbusters, the R-rated “Long Walk” is a much bloodier affair — and bolder in its scaled-down suspense. There isn’t anything one could really describe as an action sequence. Instead, the film is haunted and strikingly talky, with the young men working together to stay distracted and keep their dignity as they are killed off one by one.

“When someone dies, the actor would get sent home. They were done,” Hoffman says, explaining that the film shot in sequence. “We would tap each other on the back. That was just a recognition of, ‘You’re doing a good job. This is not our day. It’s your day and we’re going to be there for you.’”

Hoffman leads the cast alongside “Industry” breakout David Jonsson, who plays Peter McVries, a level-headed confidante to his fellow contestants. The two actors immediately connected in their chemistry read, to the point where Hoffman directly told Jonsson, “You’re one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever met.”

“I remember feeling like Cooper was unlike anyone I’ve met before — so rich in spirit. I still feel that way about him today,” Jonsson shares in an email. “Nothing could’ve forged the love I have for him. Life’s like that sometimes, isn’t it? Wasn’t it Mike Tyson who said, ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face’?”

Jonsson and Hoffman’s mutual affinity is the bedrock of “The Long Walk,” keeping the audience grounded even as the existential terror grows. As the body count rises and the call list dwindles, Garraty turns to McVries to confess. It is revealed that Garraty’s anti-authoritarian father was taken by the military, leaving the young man alone with his mother. Garraty enlists in the Long Walk with plans to use the winning prize to enact retribution. But as the contest drags on, his resolve starts to crumble.

The parallels between his character and himself were immediately evident to Hoffman when reading the script. He was 10 years old when his father died in 2014.

“It’s a lot of stuff that I’ve gone through. That’s super intimidating to me. How do I honestly portray this?” Hoffman says. “I had that feeling with my acting career. ‘I’m going to go do this thing the way that my dad wanted it to go.’ Then it was like in the movie, when Ray has this epiphany of ‘I actually don’t know why I’m here.’ That’s really scary, but it’s kind of a necessity to have that change in thought.” 

Hoffman called upon his personal experiences to shape his performance, and he knows that those details may also shade how audiences view the film. He remembers an early piece of advice that his mother gave him about acting.

“She says, ‘Remember you’re enough. You’re the interesting part. The things you go through in life and how you perceive them — that is the most interesting part about you,’” he says. “You’ve got to do it for other people too. Everyone experiences loss and heartbreak, having and losing friendships. You try to do it for everyone that’s felt that.” 

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Hoffman’s mother has given him tougher advice too. He still remembers one talk that sent him spiraling at a young age. 

“I thought I was going to the NBA. And then my mom said I wasn’t,” he says. “It was my first heartbreak because I love basketball so much.” 

Hoffman’s mother was correct in her forecast; her son would be too short for the NBA. But he’s definitely added a few inches in the four years since “Licorice Pizza.” In Anderson’s film, Hoffman was just an eyeline or so taller than his 5’7” romantic co-lead Alana Haim. 

Hoffman has known Anderson his entire life. The filmmaker directed his father across five features, including “The Master” (2012) and “Boogie Nights” (1997). Despite those personal ties, Hoffman says that Anderson was guarded about the prospect of casting him while developing “Licorice Pizza.”

That changed after Anderson visited New York and took Hoffman out for a catch-up over Shake Shack. After eating, Hoffman walked Anderson to the subway and, before departing, bluntly told him “I want you to know that I want to do this movie.” Anderson seemed thankful for his directness. Whether or not it decisively swung the filmmaker’s thinking, for Hoffman, it was a defining moment of lucid decision-making – the kind that comes on the cusp of adulthood and persists as a coming-of-age memory for years after. 

“It was the first moment in my life that I was genuinely, completely clear: ‘This is absolutely terrifying and super anxiety-inducing — and that is the exact right reason why I should be doing it.’ I’m very proud of that age Cooper for saying that,” Hoffman says. “I wanted to soak up whatever this experience is. I’d be dumb not to.” 

After walking away from the semi-protected working environment of Anderson’s film, Hoffman followed the advice of some peers and enrolled in an acting school in New York to hone his craft. He was the only teenager in the class; the second-youngest student was in their mid-twenties. It only took a month or so for Hoffman to realize he felt out of place.

“I just couldn’t do school. Any school, especially a technique school, tries to put you into something. And I hated it. It made me feel uncomfortable,” he says. “I thought, ‘Am I doing something wrong here?’ I’m very much someone who wants to do everything perfectly – almost to a fault.” 

Seeking some control, Hoffman quickly got back in the field. He booked a lead role in Simon West’s action-comedy “Old Guy,” playing a smarmy zoomer assassin giving lip to crime biz vets played by Christoph Waltz and Lucy Liu. Perhaps it’s because the film didn’t score great reviews before quietly releasing in February, but I seem to have caught Hoffman off-guard by bringing up the title. But then he smiles.

“That movie was a mirror to my face of, ‘You want this? You’ve got to put this amount of work into it,’” Hoffman says. “I still like that movie! But I think it is a product of me not really knowing what I’m doing. It was a fire under my ass.”

Hoffman felt those flames again starring in writer-director Gregg Araki’s “I Want Your Sex.” The coming feature will be the first in over a decade for Araki, a giant of American queer cinema whose indie emergence in the 1990s yielded the cult-beloved Teenage Apocalypse trilogy. If the logline is anything to go off, “I Want Your Sex” is poised to make a splash. The story unfolds after Hoffman’s character gets a unique job opportunity: working as the “sexual muse” for an artist played by Olivia Wilde.

“I’m just very much a bit…” Hoffman begins before trailing off, picking the right word. “…Visible in that movie. It really fucking gave me my bearings.”

Hoffman says it took a few weeks to get oriented in the “vortex of uncomfortableness,” but that Wilde was patient and encouraging in helping him navigate his initial discomfort.

“She’s such a badass. She never made me feel behind. Never. I felt so dialed in. She’s one of my favorite actors to work with,” Hoffman says. “Even though I want to pull my fucking hair out, I have to look like I’m enjoying this. To get to that place is really hard. You have to let go of everything.”

The unique mental hurdles of “I Want Your Sex” reinforced Hoffman’s own confidence, particularly in prepping him for his role in last spring’s Off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class.”

“I had to walk across the stage naked,” he says. “Which ended up being the easiest part about that play! It does all the work for you.”

Even as he continues to challenge himself, Hoffman is careful to use the phrase that he wants to be an actor “right now.”

“I check in with myself constantly if I still want to do it. Because it’s not easy,” he says. “The second I really want to stop doing it, I’ll stop doing it. Hopefully I’ll feel like I can – that I have that stability in my brain.”

But he also believes one of the major creative privileges of sticking with acting is the prospect of broadening his range and aging into new roles, as he watched many actors do over his adolescence. I ask if there are particular people he admires in that regard. His gaze moves above my shoulder, and he stares off for a moment. Then a sigh, before he looks back and rolls into his response. 

“It’s so annoying. It is my dad. That’s just the answer. I don’t have it with anyone else,” he says. “I love a lot of actors, but there is a truthfulness that I think my dad brought. He’s a good one to look up to. I can’t hide that.” 

Hoffman hasn’t seen all his father’s on-screen performances; he’s in no rush to either. But he did recently watch Todd Solondz’s very black comedy “Happiness,” one of the most controversial and morbidly memorable films of the ‘90s, in which his father plays a murmuring loner wracked by severe sexual fantasies for his neighbor.

“I’m obsessed with Todd Solondz,” Hoffman says. “And there’s just something about my dad in that that’s so gross and ugly and heartbreaking to watch. That is what I would like to strive for.” 

Hoffman visited some of his father’s film sets growing up, but his more vivid memories are in the theater, pretending to write notes on his mother’s scripts. He says she’s remained a great listener as he’s moved past his first steps into the industry. 

“All the best acting advice I’ve ever gotten is from my mother,” Hoffman says, then cracks a smile while pointing at my recorder. “She’s going to be very happy about this.”

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Hoffman isn’t in the NBA, but he still loves basketball. As our time winds down, I can’t help but ask about his hometown team, the New York Knicks.

“My Knicks? Ah, Jesus fucking Christ,” Hoffman says, suddenly louder as he averts his gaze downward. “We’re all still angry. Our fanbase is a mess, genuinely. We have such a problem.”

For those who don’t watch, the Knicks just achieved their best season in many years, eliminating the reigning champ Boston Celtics to make the Eastern Conference Finals. There, they lost in six games, missing the Finals. The sting of defeat flashes in Hoffman’s eyes, but then he builds to a more optimistic outlook.

“My favorite thing about sports is it’s such a beautiful metaphor for life. They go all this way to lose. Then they get up and play another 82-game season and fucking do it again,” Hoffman says.

“I have the privilege of knowing a few of the players. And I love them on the team. And they played their fucking asses off,” he continues, growing more animated. He repeats himself more slowly. “They played their fucking. Asses. Off.”

“And I respect,” he then points down to emphasize the next three words, “Every fucking second they put on that court. I’m extremely proud of them. And I know we just got a new coach, so I’m excited to see what he does.”

I tell Hoffman that they’re getting their new coach, Mike Brown, from my team: the dubiously managed Sacramento Kings, who fired Brown mid-season last year. Hoffman can’t help but cut me off in horrified pity.

“You’re a Kings fan?” he practically seethes. I must look scandalized, because he quickly eases the conversation with, “Listen. Hey man, we all got our teams. I’m not pissed!”

“I’m the one who should be pissed,” I manage to answer.

“You should be pissed,” he agrees. But while any fan harbors criticisms for their team (and sometimes for someone else’s too), Hoffman pleads ignorance on knowing better than the pros.

“I can yell and yell all I want, but it’s so not my fucking place to say what to do. I have absolutely no idea. I would never want to be out on that fucking floor,” he says.

Then he finds another sports metaphor — this one more personal.

“When people tell me how to act, I’m like, ‘Don’t! Don’t do that.’ I’m figuring it out. I might miss a shot, but I’ll get back on defense. It’s OK.”