Gaby Hoffmann

At 42 years old, Gaby Hoffmann has this physical status:

Gabrielle Mary Hoffmann (born January 8, 1982) is an American film and television actress best known for her roles on Sleepless in Seattle, Now and Then, Transparent and Girls, which garnered her nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2015, respectively.

Additionally, she is remembered as a child actress from the films Field of Dreams, Uncle Buck, Now and Then, and Volcano.

Early life

Hoffmann was born in New York City. Her mother Viva (born Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann) is an actress, writer and former Warhol superstar, and her father, Anthony Herrera, was a soap opera actor best known for his role as James Stenbeck in As the World Turns. Viva and Herrera were estranged shortly after Hoffmann's birth; she was raised by her mother at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Her father did not have a significant presence in her life. Hoffmann's birth is documented in Pat Hackett's The Andy Warhol Diaries. An entry dated January 10, 1982, two days after Hoffmann was born, says that a friend of Warhol's telephoned Warhol and told him that they were going to the Chelsea Hotel to see Viva and her new baby.

Hoffmann's mother was raised in a devout Catholic family on Long Island, the daughter of an attorney. She was previously married to director Michel Auder in 1969. Hoffmann has a half-sister, Alexandra "Alex" Auder, who is 11 years older and teaches yoga in New York City. Hoffmann's father was raised in Wiggins, Mississippi by his maternal grandparents; his own father, Gaby's paternal grandfather, was of French and Spanish descent. Herrera died in 2011 from cancer.

Hoffmann attended elementary school in Manhattan at P.S. 3 on Hudson Street in the West Village, then another school in Hell's Kitchen. After she moved to Los Angeles in 1994, she attended the Buckley School, before finally graduating from Calabasas High School in 1999.

Until July 1993, Hoffmann lived in Manhattan's Chelsea Hotel, which Hoffmann later said she enjoyed. According to Hoffmann, she and her best friend Talya Shomron roller-skated in the hallways, spied on the drug dealer across the hall, and persuaded the bellman to go to the neighborhood delicatessen at night to fetch them ice cream.

Hoffmann recalled, "I grew up in downtown New York in the '80s. I have a friend who grew up with me, and she puts it well. She says, 'If you grew up where we grew up, if you weren't an artist, a drag queen, queer, or a drug addict, then you were the freak.' I grew up in a world where I guess what is considered unusual or abnormal for the rest of America was very much considered the norm." She also reported in an interview that there had been gunfire and a rape at the hotel shortly before they moved out.

Hoffmann and her mother left the Chelsea Hotel after a long-standing dispute with the management that ended in eviction. Regardless, Hoffmann's connection to the hotel had a significant effect on her future. The idea for the 1994 sitcom Someone Like Me originated after Gail Berman (former president of Viacom's Paramount Pictures) read a New York Times article about the hotel which referred to a children's book that Viva and friend Jane Lancellotti wrote, Gaby at the Chelsea (a take on Kay Thompson's 1950s classic Eloise books). Berman became the show's producer.

After leaving the Chelsea when Hoffmann was 12, she and her mother moved to the west coast to a two-bedroom rented house in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, which was badly damaged in the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake. While regrouping their living situation, Hoffmann and her mother temporarily lived at The Oceana Suites Hotel in Santa Monica, California.

After she graduated from Calabasas High School in 1999, Hoffmann followed her half-sister Alex's example and entered New York's Bard College to pursue a degree in literature and writing. Around 2001, she temporarily left her acting career to complete her studies and graduated in 2004; her senior thesis was a documentary film.

After college, she spent much of her 20s drifting. She interned with a chef in Italy, then trained to be a doula after helping deliver Alex's children. For a time, Hoffmann and a boyfriend lived in an old trailer in the Catskill Mountains.

Personal life

Hoffmann has a daughter, born in 2014, with longtime boyfriend, cinematographer Chris Dapkins (born November 19, 1980). She lives in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn.

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Career

Hoffmann began working in restaurants at the age of four to help pay the family's bills. Field of Dreams, her first film, starred Kevin Costner in 1989. Uncle Buck appeared in 1989, John Candy, and up-and-coming child actress Macaulay Culkin were all featured. However, she grew bored of the screen drama and was temporarily suspended. Nonetheless, when she learned that Culkin (whom she looted when they were working together) was making a lot of money in feature films, she got the best of her, and she reentered the field. Mel Gibson appeared in This Is My Life (1992), Sleepless in Seattle (1993) with Tom Hanks and The Man Without a Face with Mel Gibson. Hoffmann said that the praise she received for her appearance in This is My Life encouraged her to pursue a full-time acting career in Hollywood because it gave her the confidence she needed to tackle big roles.

Hoffmann starred in her own sitcom Someone Like Me (on NBC) about a teenage girl, Gaby, and her dysfunctional family. Hoffmann appeared on late-night talk shows such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman to promote it. Although generally well-received, the series only had six episodes.

Hoffmann appeared in the 1995 television film Freaky Friday, a remake of the 1976 film of the same name starring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris, after Someone Like Me. Hoffmann appeared in the coming-of-age film Now and Then in the same year as Freaky Friday.

Andrea Eagerton appeared in The CBS television film Whose Daughter Is She? in 1995, Hoffmann appeared in Andrea Eagerton's "Whose Daughter Is She?"

Hoffmann appeared in many films, including Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Volcano (1997), The Hairy Bird (1999), Come Soon (1999), You Can Count on Me (2001), and Perfume (1999).

Hoffmann primarily concentrated on a theatre career in New York between 2003 and 2007. 24 Hour Plays (as Denise at the American Airlines Theatre) The Sugar Syndrome (Williamstown Theatre Festival – July/August 2005), and Third (Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater/Lincoln Center Theater – December 2005). She appeared in a film of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in late 2005. She appeared in the Broadway play Suburbia, as well as Kieran Culkin and Jessica Capshaw at the Second Stage Theatre in New York City, which ran from September to October 2006. Hoffmann then returned to the 24 Hours Plays, where she appeared alongside Jennifer Aniston.

Hoffmann has returned to film acting since 2007. In 2007, she appeared in the film Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America. She appeared in Guest of Cindy Sherman, a documentary about art-scene commentator Paul Hasegawa-Overacker's friendship with enigmatic photographer Cindy Sherman, in 2008. Sherman was married to Hoffman's stepfather, Michel Auder, from 1984 to 1999. Hoffmann appeared in Chelsea on the Rocks, a tribute to Chelsea's Chelsea Hotel, where she grew up. The documentary, directed by Abel Ferrara, showcases the many personalities and artistic voices that have emerged from the legendary residence.

Hoffmann appeared in Todd Solondz' Life During Wartime and the thriller 13 with Mickey Rourke in 2009 (released in 2010).

Hoffmann appeared in Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus (2013), several years ago. She and Cera took mescaline while filming in Chile for their role in a climactic scene.

In Season 3, Hoffmann has made guest appearances. Hoffmann has appeared in seasons 4 and 5 of Girls.

She completed her work on Lyle, a Web series developed by Stewart Thorndike and Jill Soloway in 2013. It was shot in New York City. She later bought an apartment in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood. "The First March," directed by Gilly Barnes, was released in October 2013 in the 1910s version of Vanity Fair's The Decades Series, "The First March."

In a few of her projects, including Crystal Fairy, Girls, and the Amazon series Transparent, Hoffmann has addressed her complete frontal nude scenes. "People are obsessed with actresses being hairless, fatless Barbie dolls," Hoffmann said. People would not expect that they would want to be anything other than that. It's been seen as almost a political remark when they aren't. Lena Dunham, a look at the film. She is a beautiful woman, and people are raving over how brave she is to expose herself naked, a belief that I find completely derogatory and ridiculous. No one would have thought Angelina Jolie was naked on film, but she would say she was brave. Lena's brave because she doesn't appear the way she's supposed to look, which makes the suggestion that she is brave. I think that's a shame.

After seeing her appearance on Louis C.K., Jill Soloway wrote the role Hoffmann plays in Transparent for her. Louie's third season.

During Sia's Nostalgic for the Present concert tour in 2016, she appeared in pre-recorded video as an onstage "stand-in" for the song "Unstoppable." Her appearance is included on the song's official music video, which was released in 2021.

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