Basil Hoffman was a renowned American character actor, distinguished for his extensive work in classic films, collaborating with celebrated directors such as Peter Bogdanovich, Mario Monicelli, Richard Benjamin, Carl Reiner, Peter Medak, and Alan J. Pakula, among many others, including Academy Award winners Ethan and Joel Coen, Paolo Sorrentino, Michel Hazanavicius, Steven Spielberg, Delbert Mann, Blake Edwards, Stanley Donen, Sydney Pollack, Ron Howard, and Robert Redford.
Throughout his career, Hoffman was a dedicated private acting teacher and coach, frequently serving as a guest lecturer and instructor at prestigious academic institutions, including the American Film Institute, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Emerson College, the University of Southern California, the National University of Theater and Film in Bucharest, Romania, Confederation College in Canada, and the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in Beirut, Lebanon.
In 2008, Hoffman returned to Beirut as a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy to Lebanon, where he taught acting and directing at the University of Balamand's Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, Lebanese University, Notre Dame University, and St. Joseph University's Institut D'Etude Scéniques Audiovisuelles et Cinématographiques.
As a respected member of the film industry, Hoffman served on the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild, the Fine Arts Advisory Council of Loyola Marymount University, and was an Advisory Director of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He was also a member of both the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Basil Hoffman was a prolific author, penning the acting textbooks "Cold Reading and How to Be Good at It" and "Acting and How to Be Good at It" (and its Second Edition),with a foreword by Sydney Pollack.
