Cooper Hoffman: 5 Movies to Get to Know Philip Seymour Hoffman's Actor Son (and 4 to Look out For)
If I had to take a ranking of the best Hollywood nepo-babies, Cooper Hoffman would likely end up somewhere near the very top. There’s just something endearing about the way that the actor has followed in his late father’s footsteps—the generationally talented Philip Seymour Hoffman, who tragically passed away in 2014 when Cooper was just 11 years old.
The younger Hoffman was, of course, given his first break by Paul Thomas Anderson, one of his father’s most frequent and loyal collaborators, who cast the young actor in the lead role of Liquorice Pizza, his wonderfully nostalgic gem from 2021. Since more than rising to the occasion for that part, Hoffman has been quietly honing his craft with a selection of slightly off-the-grid movies in which he’s had the opportunity to work with some of the best up-and-coming actors and directors around—as well as, increasingly, a few notable arthouse stars.
In the list below, you’ll find info on all five of the actor’s movies thus far, as well as a little bit on four hotly-anticipated titles that he’ll be appearing in later this year. Read on to discover more and use the guide below to find out where to stream them on services like Apple TV, Netflix, Prime Video and elsewhere.
6. Upcoming: Poetic License (late 2026)
If Hoffman is making a point of working with other talented offspring of stars, he certainly seems to be picking the good ones. Premiering to acclaim at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Poetic License (set for release sometime this year) is the debut feature of Maude Apatow, the multihyphenate daughter of Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann.
In the movie, Mann plays a soon-to-be empty nester who ends up in an unlikely love triangle with two college seniors—played by Hoffman and Andrew Feldman (a fellow Saturday Night star). Imagine a comedic and less overtly sexy cover version of Y tu mamá también, and you’ll have some idea of what to expect.
7. Upcoming: I Want Your Sex (late 2026)
The next upcoming Hoffman movie to look out for is I Want Your Sex, the long-awaited twelfth feature of queer cinema legend and provocateur Gregg Araki, who you might know as the director of the 2004 Joseph Gordon Levitt movie Mysterious Skin.
For this one, Hoffman is starring as Elliot, the assistant and muse of a provocative artist played by Olivia Wilde. According to reports, both Johnny Knoxville and Charli XCX feature in the cast—to which I say, Sign me up!
8. Upcoming: Artificial (late 2026)
The most high-profile gig on Hoffman’s upcoming schedule is without a doubt his supporting turn in Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial—the first straight-up biopic from the genre-bending director behind such beloved movies as Challengers, Suspiria, and Call Me By Your Name.
Starring Andrew Garfield as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Hoffman as his co-founder, Greg Brockman, and apparently Ike Barinholtz as Elon Musk, this ripped-from-the-headlines project looks like it will be putting artificial intelligence firmly in its crosshairs, as well as the tech bro culture surrounding it. Expect a Venice premiere and plenty of awards chatter.
9. Upcoming: The Chaperones (late 2026)
The last movie on Hoffman’s upcoming slate is India Donaldson’s The Chaperones, an A24 crime comedy that will see the actor reuniting with David Johnson, his Long Walk co-star, in an enticing cast that also features Paul Dano (The Batman), Danielle Deadwyler (The Woman in the Yard), Alfred Molina (Love is Strange) and Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness).
Naturally, not a huge amount is known about this one at this point, but given how much I loved Donaldson’s debut Good One, you can basically put me down for a seat on opening night.
If you’re looking to dive into the world of Cooper Hoffman, there’s no better place to start than Licorice Pizza. This was the movie that introduced Hoffman (who was just 17 at the time of the shoot) to the world and—through the character of Gary Valentine—established his screen persona as an endearing and unconventionally charming hustler.
The movie itself is an absolute delight and a showcase for Paul Thomas Anderson’s most joyous, nostalgic and mischievous tendencies—think roughly two parts Boogie Nights, one part Magnolia.
Cooper's biggest role since Pizza came in last year’s The Long Walk—an old school-feeling Stephen King adaptation that felt closer in spirit to the original Running Man than even Edgar Wright’s recent remake.
The movie boasts a dystopian setup characteristic of the writer’s best work—a televised last-man-standing walk across America where the penalty for falling behind can be fatal. Check this one out for Hoffman’s co-star, David Johnson, too—another incredible actor (Rye Lane, Alien: Romulus) who we will likely be seeing a lot more of in the next few years.
It’s a shame that Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night ended up getting a little too deep into the lore of SNL and its original cast members to really satisfy the not-so-informed. Indeed, most casual viewers (myself included) were left a little alienated by the movie, which is unfortunate, as Reitman had managed to put together one of the most exciting casts of young stars that we’ve seen in recent years.
There was Gabrielle Labelle (The Fabelmans) as Lorne Michaels, Rachel Sennot (Bottoms) as Rosie Schuster, Cory Michael Smith (Mountainhead) as Chevy Chase and Dylan O’Brien (Send Help) as Dan Ackroyd, alongside screen veterans like J.K. Simmons, Willem Defoe, and Tracy Letts. Then, of course, there was Hoffman as Michaels’ right-hand man, Dick Ebersol. Needless to say, he held his own.
In 2023, Hoffman followed up his dazzling debut with a smaller role in Wildcat, an inventive biopic about Flannery O’Connor directed by Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon) and starring his daughter (and Hoffman’s fellow nepo baby all-star) Maya Hawke, who, if you know her from anything, it’s playing Robin on Stranger Things.
Hawke stars as the legendary author of Wise Blood, but she also plays a selection of other characters in the writer’s most celebrated short stories. Hoffman appears in one of these as a bible salesman and gives a brief but memorable performance.
Old Guy is definitely the weirdest title in the Cooper Hoffman oeuvre so far, but if you’re interested in seeing him in something a little different, it might be the movie for you. Released in 2024 to little fanfare, we can probably look back on it now as the actor trying his hand at a totally different genre.
The movie is a Northern Ireland-set action comedy in which Hoffman plays a young hitman opposite Christoph Waltz’s (Inglorious Basterds) seasoned pro. Lucy Liu (Kill Bill) rounds out the overqualified cast.
