Cooper Hoffman and other young Hollywood stars with very famous parents

Today, it was revealed that Cooper Hoffman — 17-year-old son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman — will make his big screen debut as the lead of Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming coming-of-age movie. Hoffman is due to become the latest in a long line of celebrity children to make the jump to a Hollywood career of their own.

The cinema landscape of 2020 is full of famous children who are in the early stages of illustrious careers of their own in front of the camera.

Here are some of the most notable famous kids currently making their way on the big screen.

Cooper Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman was a titan of acting, with an Oscar under his belt and more almost certainly on the way prior to his death at the age of 46 in 2014. He was a regular collaborator with Paul Thomas Anderson — including in The Master and Magnolia — and now it seems his son with costume designer Mimi O'Donnell is set to follow in his footsteps.

The younger Hoffman will lead the ensemble cast of Anderson’s new movie, which also includes musician and fellow feature debutant Alana Haim, as well as Bradley Cooper. Shooting on the movie is currently underway in California.

Dakota Johnson

The star of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and several of Luca Guadagnino’s recent projects, Johnson is part of what we can now consider to be an acting dynasty. Her grandmother is former Hitchcock collaborator Tippi Hedren, while her mother is Working Girl award-winner Melanie Griffith and her father is Miami Vice star Don Johnson. Those are some strong acting genes.

Read more: Johnson accompanies grandmother Hedren to premiere

Johnson has risen to be one of the brightest stars in Hollywood. She started her career with an appearance as a 10-year-old alongside her mother in Crazy in Alabama before nabbing a brief role in David Fincher’s The Social Network. The Fifty Shades franchise made her name as a leading lady and, earlier this year, she appeared in music world drama The High Note.

Lily-Rose Depp

The daughter of Johnny Depp and actor Vanessa Paradis, Lily-Rose Depp is another rising star with a pair of famous parents. She made her acting debut in Kevin Smith’s 2014 oddity Tusk, appearing alongside Smith’s daughter — Harley Quinn Smith. The duo then led Smith’s subsequent film, Yoga Hosers, together to pretty poor reviews. In true Smith form, the characters are due to appear again in planned spin-off Moose Jaws.

Read more: Knightley says new film is “Love Actually by Von Trier”

Away from the View Askewniverse, Depp has appeared alongside Timothée Chalamet in Netflix epic The King. She has a vast array of upcoming projects, including the Keira Knightley-starring twisted Christmas movie Silent Night. Depp will also appear in star-studded crime thriller Dreamland and sci-fi tale Voyagers.

Zoey Deutch

She stole the show in last year’s belated horror-comedy sequel Zombieland: Double Tap and Zoey Deutch has spent recent years carving out a niche for herself as a reliable supporting player in major Hollywood movies. Her parents both have history in the film industry — Pretty In Pink director Howard Deutch and Back to the Future trilogy actor Lea Thompson.

Read more: Thompson says Tom Cruise stepped in over topless scene

Deutch first started taking acting lessons at the age of five. She has since been a standout in comedies like Everybody Wants Some!! and Why Him?. In 2017, Deutch also appeared alongside her sister Madelyn in their mother’s directorial debut — young adulthood drama The Year Of Spectacular Men.

Michael Gandolfini

Michael Gandolfini decided to pursue acting following the sudden death of his father, James Gandolfini, in 2013. His first endeavours consisted of a small role in Ocean’s 8 and a role in HBO series The Deuce. He will step into his father’s shoes for his first major role, though, playing the young Tony Soprano in The Sopranos prequel movie The Many Saints of Newark.

Acting challenges don’t get more daunting than stepping into the role that won your father a Golden Globe, three Emmys and three SAG Awards.

Eve Hewson

Eve Hewson — daughter of U2 frontman Bono — has racked up an impressive array of feature credits. She appeared alongside Taron Egerton in the latest attempt at Robin Hood, as well as working with Steven Spielberg on Bridge of Spies — playing Tom Hanks’s daughter. This year, she played the lead role in the BBC’s 19th century drama The Luminaries.

Margaret Qualley

One of the most decorated performers on this list, Margaret Qualley — daughter of Groundhog Day actor Andie MacDowell — already has an Emmy and Critics Choice nomination for miniseries Fosse/Verdon and was nominated for a SAG Award as part of the ensemble of Quentin Tarantino’s 60s-set epic Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It’s the latter role she is most recognisable for, playing Manson Family member Pussycat.

Read more: Once Upon a Time... becomes Tarantino’s biggest UK hit

As well as those two award-courting roles, she appeared in The Leftovers and in the Shane Black comedy-thriller The Nice Guys. Next up for her is the lead role in literature world drama My Salinger Year.

Riley Keough

Owner of almost certainly the most varied filmography on this list, Riley Keough can also lay claim to having the most famous family members. Keough’s mother is Lisa Marie Presley, her grandmother is Priscilla Presley and her grandfather was, of course, music legend Elvis Presley. She made her big screen debut in 2010 musical biopic The Runaways and has since appeared in films like American Honey, The House That Jack Built and Logan Lucky.

Read more: Devil All the Time director praises Robert Pattinson

This year, Keough will be a part of the A-list ensemble for sprawling Southern Gothic thriller The Devil All the Time, which is due to arrive on Netflix in September. The cast also includes Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Eliza Scanlen and Jason Clarke.

Jack Quaid

The son of Dennis Quaid kicked off his acting career with a small role in the Hunger Games franchise, but has really found momentum as one of the lead characters in Amazon Prime superhero series The Boys. He plays vigilante Hughie Campbell in the show, which is set to return to the streamer for its second season this month.

Read more: The Boys unveils season two release plans

Maya Hawke

The offspring of Hollywood A-listers Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, Maya Hawke started her career as a model before making the shift into acting. She played the lead role in the BBC’s 2017 TV adaptation of Little Women and subsequently popped up in the third season of Netflix phenomenon Stranger Things.

As with many other famous Hollywood offspring currently rising through the industry ranks, she appeared as one of the Manson Family acolytes in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Her character was known as Flower Child.

Maude and Iris Apatow

The daughters of Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann have, perhaps unsurprisingly, ended up appearing predominantly in works shepherded by their dad — one of Hollywood’s most prominent comedy directing and producing voices. Maude and Iris both made some of their earliest appearances as the daughters of Mann’s characters in Knocked Up, Funny People and This is 40.

Read more: Judd Apatow on making long comedy movies

Most recently, Maude played a key role in The King of Staten Island. Aside from working with her parents, she has appeared in dark satire Assassination Nation and indie drama The House of Tomorrow. Iris, meanwhile, has a recurring role on Apatow’s Netflix series Love.

Louis Ashbourne Serkis

As the son of performance capture specialist Andy Serkis, many of 16-year-old Louis Ashbourne Serkis’s early roles have been in providing voices. He provided vocal work for the English dub of Japanese animation Mary and the Witch's Flower and voiced the title character’s wolf best buddy in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, directed by Serkis senior.

Read more: Cornish on Kid Who Would Be King’s box office opening

His most prominent role, however, was as the lead character in Joe Cornish’s modern day take on Arthurian legend in The Kid Who Would Be King. That film saw Serkis play the hero and also join forces with another young star of celebrity blood...

Angus Imrie

Serkis’s Kid Who Would Be King co-star was Angus Imrie, playing an unusual take on the wizard Merlin. Imrie — who is, of course, the son of the legendary British star Celia Imrie and her late partner Benjamin Whitrow — delivered a terrific comedy performance and stole just about every scene in which he appeared.

Imrie has carried out extensive work on the stage, as well as being a recurring character on radio soap opera The Archers. His telly work includes The Hollow Crown and Fleabag, while he popped up on the big screen in this year’s adaptation of Emma.

Honor Swinton Byrne

Tilda Swinton’s daughter made her first screen appearance in a non-speaking cameo in Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love. Fittingly enough, she played the younger version of her mother’s character. A decade later. she got the chance to step up into a lead role of her own for Joanna Hogg’s acclaimed drama The Souvenir, in which she plays a privileged film student who becomes embroiled in a doomed relationship with a Foreign Office employee.

Along with Hogg, Swinton Byrne has been hard at work for the last year or so on the sequel to The Souvenir, which does not currently have a release date on the calendar, but began shooting in July 2019.