This authoritative and ground-breaking text teaches the serious student of acting a proven, comprehensive and effective approach to the craft and to character development. Through revealing, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and practical exercises, the veteran character actor guides readers through his unique, direct approach to recognizing and understanding human behavior, leading actors to discover and demonstrate the specific, individual humanity in every character. The broad scope of Hoffman's experiences has given him a special perspective that simplifies, demystifies and illustrates, in specific and easily understandable terms, the acting experience, not in theory, but as it is practiced at the highest levels of the industry. Includes: 100 specific questions and answers from Hoffman's acting classes * Fifteen production photographs of Hoffman's work in scenes from select films and plays.
BASIL HOFFMAN - Biography
Basil Hoffman is one of the most recognizable American character actors in film. His first film role was in LADY LIBERTY with Sophia Loren, directed by Mario Monicelli. On his first trip to Los Angeles in 1974, he filmed his second theatrical feature, AT LONG LAST LOVE, for Peter Bogdanovich, two television movies, television episodes of "Kung Fu," "Rockford Files," "Sanford and Son," "Police Woman" and "M*A*S*H," and numerous television commercials.
Following one brief return to New York for "One Life to Live", he moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Since then, although most of his work has been in film and television, he has made a few stage appearances, most notably in "Sand Mountain," by Romulus Linney, for which he won a Drama-Logue Award, the first staged reading of Martin E. Brooks' "Joe and Flo" at the Actors Studio, and the world premiere of William Blinn's "Walking Peoria."
He is best known for his work, often in classic films, with distinguished directors, including (in addition to Peter Bogdanovich and Mario Monicelli) Richard Benjamin, Carl Reiner, Peter Medak (four times) and Alan J. Pakula (twice); Academy Award winners Steven Spielberg, Delbert Mann, Blake Edwards, Stanley Donen, Sydney Pollack, Ron Howard and Robert Redford (twice); and many others.
A long-time private acting teacher and coach, he has also been a frequent guest lecturer and teacher at prestigious academic institutions, including (among many others) the American Film Institute; Louisiana State University; the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; Confederation College in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada; the University of Southern California; and the Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in Beirut, Lebanon.
In 2008, he returned to Beirut as a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy to Lebanon to teach acting and directing at the University of Balamand's Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, Lebanese University, Notre Dame University and St. Joseph University's Institut D'Etude Sceniques Audiovisuelles et Cinematographiques.
He is a former member of the Board of Directors of Screen Actors Guild and the Fine Arts Advisory Council of Loyola Marymount University. He is an Advisory Director of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and is a member of both the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
He is also the author of the acting textbooks, COLD READING AND HOW TO BE GOOD AT IT and ACTING AND HOW TO BE GOOD AT IT (and The Second Edition) with a foreword by Sydney Pollack.
The basilhoffman.com Website is the best source for Basil Hoffman biographical material, including film clips and production photos.
