He was never meant to be an actor – wary of comparisons with his late father Philip Seymour Hoffman. Now a rising star, he talks about growing up, embracing discomfort and forging his own pathWhen Cooper Hoffman was in his teens, he didn’t have any grand plans for the future, though there was one thing he knew for sure: he did not want to be an actor. Why? “I didn’t want to do it because my dad did it so well, and it felt like I’d be going up against him. It would feel like I was inherently stepping into something competitive.”Given Hoffman’s father is Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar-winning star of Boogie Nights, Almost Famous, The Master and Capote, you can see why he would feel that way. But then Paul Thomas Anderson, the Boogie Nights director who is a friend of the family, and whose children Cooper played with when he was growing up, asked him if he would read for a part. It was the lead in the 2021 film Licorice Pizza, about a teenage boy smitten with a woman in her mid-20s. It ...