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.
