Basil Hoffman was an American character actor, known for his work, often in classic films, with distinguished film directors including Peter Bogdanovich, Mario Monicelli, Richard Benjamin, Carl Reiner (twice), Peter Medak (five times) and Alan J. Pakula (twice); 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 (twice); and many others. A long-time private acting teacher and coach, he was also a frequent guest lecturer and teacher at prestigious academic institutions, including (among many others) the American Film Institute, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Emerson College, University of Southern California, the National University of Theater and Film in Bucharest Romania, Confederation College in Canada and the Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2008, he returned to Beirut as a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy to Lebanon to teach acting and directing at the University of Balamand's Academie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts, Lebanese University, Notre Dame University and St. Joseph University's Institut D'Etude Sceniques Audiovisuelles et Cinematographiques. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Screen Actors Guild and the Fine Arts Advisory Council of Loyola Marymount University. He was an Advisory Director of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and is a member of both the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Basil was the author of the acting textbooks, "Cold Reading and How to Be Good at It" and "Acting and How to Be Good at It" (and The Second Edition) with a foreword by Sydney Pollack.