With the halls of Manhattan’s Bohemian Chelsea Hotel as her playground, actor Gaby Hoffmann was surrounded by fame since she was born the daughter of “Viva,” a cult Warhol film star.
With acting in her blood, Hoffman, who tried to retire from acting twice, says she prefers to be out of the spotlight, which has been following her since she was a little girl.
Growing up with a group of eccentric characters, like photographers, drag queens and artists, that played her real-life extended family, it seemed natural that Hoffmann, now 41, would fall into acting.
Her father Anthony Herrera was a soap opera star, known for his role in As the World Turns, and her mother Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann, known by her stage name “Viva,” was a Warhol superstar, who claims she was on the phone with him when he was shot and killed by Valerie Solanas in 1968.
But the younger Hoffman has no memories of Warhol, except for a photo from a childhood birthday, holding an inflatable toy he had given her.
Starting in commercials when she was only four, Hoffman found success as a child actor, with roles in iconic films like Uncle Buck (1989), the sports fantasy film Field of Dreams (1989), and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). And though, at only seven, she announced to her family that she wanted to retire, the roles kept coming.
In her teens, she had roles in 1998’s All I Wanna Do and the 1999 film 200 Cigarettes, which has an ensemble cast of today’s top stars in earlier roles, including Ben and Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson and Paul Rudd.
As a young adult, Hoffman performed roles that reflected her unconventional upbringing.
From 2014 to 2017, she had a recurring role in Lena Dunham’s Girls, a TV series that followed the life of young women and their circle of artistic friends. Girls also acted as a launching pad for the now award-winning Adam Driver, who’s had significant success since appearing on the highly acclaimed yet controversial HBO show.
Naturally Hoffmann needed a show paying homage to the LGBT community. From 2014 to 2019, she played Ali Pfefferman, the daughter of Maura, a trans woman played by Jeffrey Tambor, on Transparent. Her role as Ali, who by the series finale comes out as binary with a new name Ari, earned her three Primetime Emmy nominations.
Her film roles also garnered a lot of praise, specifically her performances in Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus with Michael Cera, Wild with Reese Witherspoon and C’mon C’mon, a 2021 movie filmed entirely in black and white, where she stars as Viv, alongside Juaquin Phoenix, who plays her brother.
“They felt like real people with lots of edges and corners,” says Hoffmann, a mother of two. “When I read the script, my son was not even a year old and my daughter was four, so I was as immersed in parenthood as ever, and I thought that it was maybe the best script that I’d ever read.”
Referring to the natural approach of the film, written and directed by Mike Mills, Hoffman said, “It’s such a relief to read something that is about the actual life that I am concerned with and not some far-off fantasy. Even though the details of these people and their lives are very different than my own, the sort of brushstrokes, the feelings are very similar.”
Appreciating the realism of the film–it was unlike most films in that the set lacked the glamor of professional hair and makeup on set–Hoffman, who’s character Viv is relatable to the general public added, “I absolutely loved the idea. For a single mother who is an intellectual and academic who looks more or less like I look every day, it’s totally unnecessary. As an audience member I’m often so distracted by how perfect everybody always looks; they’ve just got out of bed and are feeding their five-year-old and look like they’re ready to hit the runway!”
Hoffmann next circled back to the genre of one of her movies: sports. In 2022 she had a leading role in the sports drama, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. Starring as Claire Rothman, the first ever female manager of a major sports arena, the show is loosely based on the professional and personal lives of the LA Lakers through the 1980’s, the first season featuring legendary baller Magic Johnson in his rookie year.
The all-star lineup of the show includes John C Reilly, Adrien Brody and Sally Field, as well as Jason Segel.
Despite her extraordinary, natural talent, Hoffman says that acting bored her. “I didn’t care about it at all. I didn’t think about acting. I didn’t have any relationship to it. I loved being on movie sets, but the acting itself … ?”
Attempting to detach herself from Hollywood, Hoffman stepped away at 17, explaining, “I didn’t think I would ever return to it. I was just interested in getting to college and becoming a teacher.” She graduated from the liberal arts school at Bard College in Upstate New York. The school has a reputation for producing high profile stars, like Blythe Danner, Chevy Chase, Mia Farrow, the Coen Brothers, Jonah Hill, and of course Gaby Hoffmann.
For some, acting really is in their blood, and Gaby Hoffmann is proof of this. We’re happy that she’s decided to stick with acting and we can’t wait to see what she does next!
