Gaby Hoffmann

Gabriella Mary "Gaby" Hoffmann (born January 8, 1982) is an American film and television actress who was a former child actress, most well known for recently appearing in the television series Louie, Girls, and Transparent. Early life Hoffmann was born in New York City to mother Viva Auder Hoffmann, an American actress, writer and former Warhol superstar, and to father Anthony Herrera, a soap actor best known for his role as James Stenbeck from As The World Turns. Viva and Herrera were estranged shortly after Hoffmann's birth; she was raised by her mother, Viva, at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Her father did not have a significant presence in her life. Hoffmann's birth is documented in Brigid Berlin'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 previously married director Michel Auder in 1969, so Hoffmann has a half-sister, Alexandra "Alex" Auder, who is 11 years older. Auder is a yoga teacher in New York City. Hoffmann's mother's ancestry is German, Irish, English, and Italian. Hoffman's biological father was raised in Wiggins, Mississippi by his maternal grandparents. Herrera died in 2011 from cancer. Life at the Chelsea Hotel Until 1993, Hoffmann lived in Manhattan's fabled, now landmarked, Chelsea Hotel, which Hoffmann later said she enjoyed. According to Hoffmann, she and her best friend Talya Shomron would roller-skate in the hallways, spy on the drug dealer across the hall, and persuade the bellman to go to the neighborhood deli at night and get them ice cream. Hoffmann and her mother left the Chelsea Hotel in July 1993 after a dispute of long standing with the management, but the hotel ended up featuring prominently in Hoffmann’s future. The idea for the 1994 sitcom Someone Like Me originated after Gail Berman (former president of Viacom's Paramount Pictures), the show's producer, read aNew York Times article about the hotel which referred to a children's book which Viva and friend Jane Lancellotti wrote entitled Gaby at the Chelsea (a take on Kay Thompson’s 1950s classic Eloise books). On her childhood: "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." When Hoffmann was 11, after leaving the Chelsea, Hoffmann and her mother (and their two Eskimo dogs) moved to the west coast to a two-bedroom rented house in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California which ended up being badly damaged in the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake. While regrouping their living situation, Gaby and her mother temporarily lived at The Oceana Suites Hotel in Santa Monica. After she graduated from Calabasas High School in 1999, Hoffmann followed her half-sister's example and entered New York's Bard Collegeto pursue a degree in literature. Starting in 2001, she put her acting career on hold to complete her studies. She graduated in 2003, and then spent much of her 20s drifting. She interned with a chef in Italy, and then trained to be a doula after helping deliver her sister Alex's children. For a time, Hoffmann and a boyfriend lived in an old trailer in the Catskills. Hoffmann attended 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 prestigious Buckley School, before finally graduating from Calabasas High School in 1999. Career Hoffmann began her acting career at the age of four to help pay the family bills by acting in commercials. However, she tired of the tough schedules and temporarily retired. Nevertheless, upon hearing that Macaulay Culkin was making a lot of money from his movies her "competitive spirit got the best of her," as she later put it, and she re-entered the profession. In 1989, she starred in her first movie, Field of Dreams, with Kevin Costner. She followed this up with 1989’s Uncle Buckwith John Candy (as well as Macaulay Culkin) and then went on to star in This Is My Life (1992), Sleepless in Seattle (1993) with Tom Hanks andThe Man Without a Face with Mel Gibson. According to Hoffmann, it was the praise she received for her performance in This is My Life which encouraged her to pursue a full-time acting career in Hollywood as it gave her the confidence she needed to handle major roles. In 1994, Hoffmann was given the starring role in her own sitcom Someone Like Me (on NBC) about a young girl, Gaby, and her dysfunctional family. Although generally well received, the show only lasted six episodes. Publicity work for the show included personal appearances by Hoffmann on late night talk shows like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman. Personal life Hoffmann has a daughter, Rosemary, born in November 2014, with longtime boyfriend, cinematographer Chris Dapkins. She lives in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn.