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Cooper Hoffman thought about his “relationship to my father or my relationship to my parents in general” while stepping into the shoes of a grieving son in his upcoming Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk
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“Growing up, you start to realize that what they are is not you,” Cooper, 22, told Vanity Fair of how both his character Ray Garraty and himself think about growing up without a parent
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The Long Walk, which also costars David Jonsson, Judy Greer and Mark Hamill, releases Sept. 12
Cooper Hoffman had his late father Philip Seymour Hoffman on his mind while working on his new Stephen King adaptation.
The younger Hoffman, 22, told Vanity Fair that he reckoned with his father Philip’s legacy while getting into character for the feature film adaptation of King’s 1979 novel The Long Walk, in which Cooper portrays a young man named Ray Garraty who enters a deadly contest that forces contestants walk at least four miles per hour without stopping until only one remains.
“The way I always had to think about it was, like, my relationship to my father or my relationship to my parents in general,” Cooper said. His character joins the titular walk as he mourns the death of his father; Cooper’s real-life dad Philip died at 46 of an apparent drug overdose in February 2014.
“You kind of believe everything they tell you, and you kind of want to do what they want to. You want to be them, even if you don’t want to be them,” the actor added of how his real-life upbringing as the son of an Oscar-winning actor mixed with his character’s background. “Growing up, you start to realize that what they are is not you. To try to live your life for someone else, especially for someone else who isn’t there… There’s a nice scene in the movie where [McVries] is saying, ‘Anger only gets you so far.’ And it is true, because anger is a feeling based on grief.”
Related: Jesse Plemons Once Played Late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Son Before Taking on His Hunger Games Character for Upcoming Prequel
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Cooper Hoffman on May 10, 2023
Cooper stars in The Long Walk with David Jonsson (Alien: Romulus), who portrays another contest participant named McVries. Judy Greer plays Cooper’s onscreen mother, who watches the contest from afar, while Mark Hamill steps into a villain role as a military-style leader known only as The Major. The story, which author King, 77, wrote as his first-ever novel at the University of Maine in the 1960s and published under the pen name Richard Bachman in 1979, is set in a dystopian United States ruled by a military dictatorship.
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“Garraty believed wholeheartedly that his father was fighting for the exact right thing, and his father could do no wrong. And then, at one point, it switches,” Hoffman said of the movie, noting that his character Garraty realizes at one point, “Okay, who am I in this? Even if I started out on this journey doing it for someone else, how am I going to finish it, doing it for me?”
Related: Philip Seymour Hoffman: Read PEOPLE’s Cover Story About His ‘Very Dark’ Last Days 11 Years After His Death
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Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cooper Hoffman on Nov. 25, 2012
Cooper followed his father Philip into acting beginning in 2021, when he costarred with Alana Haim in Licorice Pizza. Since then, he has appeared in Ethan Hawke and Maya Hawke’s 2023 movie Wildcat, the 2024 Saturday Night Live movie Saturday Night and in Old Guy, released earlier this year.
Aside from The Long Walk, Cooper will next costar with Olivia Wilde in an upcoming film titled I Want Your Sex; he has multiple other projects in the works.
The Long Walk struts its way into theaters Sept. 12.
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