Why ‘Girls’ alum Gaby Hoffmann ultimately returned to acting after childhood fame

Gaby Hoffmann knows she had an unusual childhood growing up the daughter of Warhol acolyte Viva and being raised in the famed Chelsea Hotel. 

“Special is one of the many words for it,” she tells the New York Post in a recent exclusive interview. “I’m very grateful for it now that I’m an adult and mother.”

The “Girls” alum shares that in a way she had an old-fashioned childhood.

“What I had was a neighborhood, a community,” she explains. “The hotel was my little community and I had independence, freedom and I also had a hundred eyes on me at all times. I had my own little world that I could explore at a very young age and I really had a village that was participating in raising me.”

Hoffmann, 42, began acting as a child and appeared in some memorable movies including “Uncle Buck,” with fellow child actor Macauley Culkin, “Now and Then,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” and “The Man Without a Face,” opposite Mel Gibson.

But Hoffmann says for many years she had no desire to act as an adult. 

“I had no interest in being an actress when I was a kid or a teenager,” she confesses. “I just kept doing it because it was kind of fun and it was a means to an ends. I was just waiting to go to college and start my real life, which I thought was going to be as a teacher.”

It wasn’t until several years later when Hoffmann found herself, “depressed and anxious” and directionless that she considered going back to work as an actress. 

What has followed is a string of critically acclaimed performances in independent movies and TV shows like “Transparent.”

Hoffmann’s latest project is the Netflix limited series, “Eric,” opposite Benedict Cumberbatch.

In it she plays a mother whose young son goes missing when walking to school in New York City in the early 80s. 

Despite the dark subject matter, Hoffmann says filming was an “energizing” and “joyful experience” mainly due to “the people I was surrounded by.”

She also says that the shooting schedule, which saw her home every night to see her two kids with husband Chris Dapkins, helped. 

“I just walked into my house and was in my beautiful, loud, joyous life,” she says.