Gaby Hoffmann is Cooler Than You

For many, Gaby Hoffmann—that tiny little actress from Sleepless in Seattle and Field of Dreams; that girl with the enormous eyebrows—may be a relic of the 1990s, someone you only run into in old movies on cable once in a while. But Hoffmann is coming back into your alt culture-sphere in a big way. In fact, Gaby Hoffmann is cooler and more interesting than you. Let's look at some examples.

For many, Gaby Hoffmann—that tiny little actress from Sleepless in Seattle and Field of Dreams; that girl with the enormous eyebrows—may be a relic of the 1990s, someone you only run into in old movies on cable once in a while. But Hoffmann, now 31, is coming back into your alt culture-sphere in a big way. Last year she made a memorable appearance on Louie, she's got upcoming roles in the indie film The Magical Cactus and on the uber-hip Girls, and now she's grabbed the brass ring of New York resurgence: a lengthy profile in The New York Times Magazine, just posted online today. The gist we get from Taffy Brodesser-Akner's highly entertaining read: Gaby Hoffmann is cooler and more interesting than you. Let's look at some examples.

Her childhood was spent in a downtown New York world of artists and bohemians

Hoffmann's mother, Viva, was one of Andy Warhol's superstars and they lived in the Chelsea Hotel:

Her mother co-wrote a book, as yet unpublished, called “Gaby at the Chelsea,” a riff on “Eloise” at the Plaza. Instead of making rich-girl mischief like Eloise, the Gaby in the storybook would undertake uniquely downtown adventures, like finding a vial of crack in the stairwell. 

Brodesser-Akner continues:

Of her childhood, Hoffmann says now: “We lived in a classless society. We’d spend a summer at Gore Vidal’s house in Italy, but we were on and off welfare” when she was a baby. That ended for good, though, when Hoffmann became an actress at age 5 and, a year later, a 6-year-old movie star.

She's blissfully uninhibited

Brodesser-Akner explains that Hoffmann does not adhere to Hollywood's rules of starlet-glamor.

 In the movie she plays a wandering hippie, and she spends a good portion of the movie naked. At a party following the film’s debut at Sundance, two women approached her to compliment her performance and then ask how she’d gotten the merkin — a pubic wig — to adhere. “No,” she explained to the two women. “That’s just me. I’m a human. I have hair.”

She can help in childbirth

After attending Bard, Hoffmann did not immediately return to acting. Among her various pursuits: "She interned with a chef in Italy; she trained to be a doula after helping deliver her sister’s kids."

So, she had a cool past and is headed for a cool future. Little Maizy from Uncle Buck has grown up so well.

Read the rest here.