Cooper Hoffman, 22, is on location in Turin. He’s starring in Artificial, Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming movie about the firing and rehiring of OpenAI C.E.O. Sam Altman in 2023, opposite Andrew Garfield, Monica Barbaro, and Ike Barinholtz. The son of the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, Cooper has been quietly prolific, appearing in a film almost every year for the past five years (Old Guy, Saturday Night, Wildcat) since his breakout role, in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, at age 17. “Wow, good for me,” he says when I point this out.
His repertoire is now expanding with The Long Walk, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1979 science-fiction/horror novel—the writer’s first, published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Set in a dystopian, totalitarian United States, it follows Ray Garrity (Cooper), a teenager who joins a brutal endurance contest. The rules are simple: keep walking or be shot by one of the military escorts who answer to the Major, played by Mark Hamill. The last man standing takes home a cash prize and a single wish of his choosing, fulfilled by the government for the rest of his life.
“I’ll do just about anything,” Cooper says of taking on such a bleak role. But this wasn’t always the case. Before Anderson handed him the whimsical coming-of-age script that would uproot his life, Cooper was certain acting wasn’t for him. “I didn’t want to do it because of my dad. That’s the simple answer,” he admits. “There’s an Oscar in our house, and it’s kind of staring you down. And I was like, ‘I’m never gonna be that because I’m not [him].’”
Following in his father’s footsteps was understandably daunting. Philip Seymour was a Hollywood institution, captivating audiences in Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Almost Famous, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Capote—it was his performance in the title role of that last film that won him the Oscar. He died in 2014, when Cooper was just 10 years old and his sisters, Tallulah and Willa, were seven and five.
Two words helped Cooper gain the confidence he needed. “The best acting advice I’ve ever been given is ‘You’re enough,’” he says.
“Who said that to you?,” I ask.
“My mom.”
His mother—the costume designer and theater director Mimi O’Donnell—is Cooper’s closest confidante and, when needed, his built-in acting coach. Unlike his father, who trained formally at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Cooper dropped out of acting school at Terry Knickerbocker Studio, in Brooklyn, after his first year, ignoring advice from family friends such as Sam Rockwell and Daniel Day-Lewis. “It was my first act of rebellion,” he says. “I’m just doing it my own way.”
Preparing for the part of Garrity, he listened to the Long Walk audiobook on the treadmill (“I’m Method as fuck,” he says) before abandoning it, finding the narrator’s voice too grating. He planned to lose weight over the course of the shoot to reflect his character’s gradual emaciation, but he never hired a trainer or worked out intensely.
In Winnipeg, where the cast filmed for two months, he bonded with his co-stars over post-shoot martinis and handed out Happy Death Day pins to whomever’s character was next to die.
Still, not every part of the job was lighthearted. O’Donnell helped him grapple with the film’s ending, which he admits disturbed him. It all comes down to Garrity and his sidekick, Peter McVries, played by Industry’s David Jonsson. Only one walks out alive. “Dying is not easy,” Cooper says. “But it’s not as hard as living.”
He also related to his character deeply, as he, too, lost his father at a young age. “It’s obviously something I thought about a lot because it’s hard not to when it’s on the page like that.” Adding another layer of resonance, the director, Francis Lawrence, was the last filmmaker to work with Cooper’s father, on the fourth Hunger Games movie, Mockingjay: Part 2.
But none of that was too distressing for Cooper. “My dad and I—he’s passed away, but we have an ongoing relationship,” he assures me with an ease that seems to permeate every part of his life. “I have a healthy relationship with acting,” he even says about his profession. “I will stop doing it when I don’t want to do it anymore.”
Filming in Turin, far from his native New York—where he sheepishly admits to having frequented AIR MAIL Co-Editor Graydon Carter’s Waverly Inn, in Greenwich Village, calling it his “date spot”—Cooper is unhappy about only one thing: the loss of his signature long, ginger locks, which usually droop over his eyes on-screen. He had to get a buzz cut for his new role, per Guadagnino’s request. “I’ve never shaved my head before. It feels like I’m shedding something,” he says, running a hand over his scalp as though searching for a phantom limb.
Aside from the occasional bad haircut, Hoffman takes life’s unexpected turns in stride. “You’re born, you start the walk, you walk the walk, you live your life, and then you die,” he says, taking a lesson from The Long Walk. “I think right now, all I’m doing is walking. I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the other.”
The Long Walk will be released in theaters on September 12
Carolina de Armas is a Junior Editor at AIR MAIL
