Introduce Yourself : My Career by Basil Hoffman

I'm a character actor, in Hollywood for many years. I am probably best known for my work, often in classic films, with distinguished film directors, including Peter Bogdanovich, Mario Monicelli, Richard Benjamin, Carl Reiner, Peter Medak (five times) and Alan J. Pakula (twice); Academy Award winners Paolo Sorrentino, Michel Hazanavicius, Steven Spielberg, Delbert Mann, Blake Edwards, Stanley Donen, Sydney Pollack, Ron Howard, Robert Redford (twice as director), Ethan and Joel Coen; and many others. My film credits include "All the President's Men," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "The Electric Horseman," "My Favorite Year," "Hail, Caesar!" and Academy Award winning Best Pictures, "Ordinary People" and "The Artist." I am also the author of two acting textbooks, “Cold Reading and How to Be Good at It” and “Acting and How to Be Good at It” with a foreword by Sydney Pollack. In Beirut in 2002, I returned in 2008 as U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy to Lebanon. One final note, I love to work. Acting is not only my profession. It's my passion.