Acting coach finds his stars at seniors centre
A hit with retirement set, Hoffman’s screen career is now taking off, too
CULVER CITY, CALIF.— A speeding Ford Fiesta passed the Sony Pictures gate and swerved into a parking lot across the street. It was 1:07 p.m.
Was this finally him? Frannie and Irwin don’t like to wait.
Ayoung man in a tight sweater tumbled out of the car. Clutching a black binder overflowing with scripts, he started to walkrun toward the Culver City Senior Center. “Ta-da!” he said as he approached the entrance, adding a little ankle turn for effect. He apologized profusely for his harried schedule.
Matthew Hoffman’s basic story is as old as Hollywood itself. After studying theatre at the Boston Conservatory, part of the Berklee College of Music, he packed a suitcase and moved to Los Angeles in 2006, determined to become a star. He got a roommate and a restaurant job and started to audition.
But then life took an unexpected turn. Hoffman, now in his late 30s, has become a celebrity, if not quite the kind he had envisioned. A few years ago he started to volunteer at the senior centre as a type of acting coach. He helps people in their 70s, 80s and 90s perform scenes from films like “Casablanca,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Wizard of Oz,” even providing wigs and costumes for special videotaped performances, which they toast with Champagne flutes filled with vanilla Ensure.
The classes, known as Tuesdays With Matthew and held once a week for an hour or so, have made him an essential part of the senior community in “the heart of screenland,” as Culver City calls itself.
Nick Pietroforte, 90, a retired musician, said Hoffman’s sessions and bright personality “make me forget my pain.”
“He makes me feel seen,” said Fran Friday, 81, a former kindergarten teacher. “Just for a little bit, I am someone.”
Hoffman has also received a lot from his “scene-iors,” as he calls them and he may start to cry if you press him about it. His showboating is a bit of a facade, a way to mask a tender heart.
“This town can be very, very, very lonely, and when things have not been going well in my life, these people have always been there for me,” he said. “They also live authentic lives. They don’t care what anyone thinks. Do. Not. Care. That gives me the courage to be my highhaired, theatre-loving self.”
But now Hoffman has a conundrum: At long last, his Hollywood career has started to take off. Earlier this year, CBS hired Hoffman as the snarky narrator for its “Love Island” reality series. Season 2 starts production shortly.
Hoffman will appear as a correspondent on the ABC News special “The Year With Robin Roberts.” Regal Cinemas pays him to interview celebrities at film junkets and premieres; the videos are distributed online.
So much work has started to come Hoffman’s way, in fact, that volunteering in Culver City has been taking a bit of a back seat, much to the dismay of Irwin Turek, 70, a retired county clerk who enjoys playing Dabney Coleman’s misogynistic role in “9 to 5” and channelling Burt Reynolds in “Smokey and the Bandit.”
“I’m always very disappointed when Matthew can’t come, which has been quite often this year,” Turek said. “I’m worried that he will forget about us.”
“If he ever left, I’d have a disaster on my hands,” Jill Thomsen, the recreation and community services co-ordinator at the centre, said.
Hoffman is more than a volunteer acting coach to the seniors who cycle through Thomsen’s hallways. He doubles as a friend and confidant — and a surrogate son, perhaps — helping them cope with the indignities of growing older. He listens to their stories and treats them like contemporaries.
“I was sick recently and missed a few weeks, and Matthew called me to check on me,” Turek said. “It made me feel like I was important enough for someone to worry about.”
Funerals, alas, are part of this gig. One centre mainstay, Dee Burress, a plain-spoken woman who liked to perform, died last year at 76. Hoffman brought flowers to class and placed them on her preferred seat. He keeps her photo on the cover of his script binder.
“It sounds lofty and weird, but Tuesdays has transformed me as a human being,” he said. “I discovered who I am.”