Who Does Louis Hofmann Want to Be?

Louis Hofmann loves to become someone else. The same could be said, of course, about most actors, but the 27-year-old seems to find a particular pleasure in identifying the unique point of distinction that allows him to immerse himself in each of his roles. For last year’s Netflix miniseries All the Light We Cannot See, for example, in which he played Werner Pfennig, a German World War II radio operator, he spent weeks before filming perfecting his character’s distinct skill set to the point that he is now able to construct a working radio in under a minute. “I fucking love to nerd out about something,” he laughs.

For Hofmann, the pure physicality of a task like building a radio is about more than just acquiring a new ability. It offers an entry point into the character’s way of being, while also creating an innate bond between the actor and the role. “I like when you focus on something physical and then you don't focus on the intellectual prep,” he explains. “It's just such an easy way to tap into the character without having to overthink too much. It's nice because you're like, ‘Okay, how would he sit in front of a radio? How would he handle the certain pieces of the radio? How does he look at it?’ You spend time with the thing that the character is spending time with and I think that just makes you connect really easily.”

All the Light We Cannot See, released in November in the midst of the SAG-AFTRA strike, is an adaptation of Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer-winning 2014 novel about the special connection between Marie-Laure, a blind French girl broadcasting for the Resistance from the besieged town of Saint-Malo, and Werner, an orphan who is inducted into the German army thanks to his technical prowess with radios. Co-starring Hugh Laurie, Mark Ruffalo, and the newcomer Aria Mia Loberti, the series vividly captures the wartime struggles of both Marie-Laure and Werner, who is tasked by his officers with pinpointing the former’s location against his will. Still, the show provides him with moments of grace and beauty, which Hofmann says was crucial to finding the right tone. “It's beautiful for him to have something to hold on to while everything else is falling apart next to him,” he says. “It wouldn't be very interesting to constantly see these main characters suffer throughout four hours. I think it's a fine line because Werner the character does suffer quite a bit. But you need those hopeful little moments.”

After his breakout lead role over three seasons on Netflix’s celebrated German-language science fiction series Dark, Hofmann has been in a period of transition over the past few years. In January 2023, he made a pandemic-delayed move from Berlin to London in search of new inspiration after giving the city a trial run in early 2020. “I’d just finished Dark and I was like, ‘I need some new input in my life, I need new trigger points,’” he recalls. After well over a decade on camera, he began taking acting classes for the first time and started accent training with the specific goal of eliminating his German accent in order to take on more English-language projects. He has succeeded to the point that in recent roles that required him to play a German character speaking English, like All the Light We Cannot See and this year’s Apple TV+ World War II miniseries Masters of the Air, he has needed a dialect coach to resurrect his native accent. “What I've always loved about acting in English is it instantly creates a character within yourself because it differentiates you from yourself,” he says. “It's a different accent, a different voice, it's a different voice that the character instantly has when I act in English.”

As evinced by his move and his latest endeavors, Hofmann is someone who is always in search of a new challenge or a new inspiration. After making his onscreen debut on a German series as a child reviewer of leisure activities, he was inspired by a fellow cast member to join an acting agency and soon landed the lead role in a German adaptation of Tom Sawyer. His hunger, he says, was obvious even at a young age. “I’ve always been very ambitious, very clear-minded of what I want,” he says. At the Tom Sawyer premiere, when asked by a photographer to write a single word on a chalkboard, he chose ‘Ehrgeiz,’ which translates roughly to ‘ambition.’ “‘Ambition’ has positive as well as negative connotations, and then ‘Ehrgeiz,’ it’s mainly negative to be fair,” he laughs. “It’s quite rough, which was a little shocking to my parents that I put it down.”

Having successfully mastered a second language, Hofmann has also recently taken up DJing, perhaps no surprise for someone who spent his formative years in Berlin. As half of the duo Marill along with his friend Lexia Hachtmann, he is adding yet another skill to his roster and finding a stimulating source of inspiration in his new pursuit. “It was when the strike was on, all of my projects got pushed and I had nothing to do,” he recalls about his start. “I came back to London and I was quite depressed. Always in my life I felt like I needed a hobby or something like that between filming. But eventually I realized I just needed another proper passion. I needed something to work on continuously to work and get better at really.”

Since relocating, Hofmann has made a point of seeking out different opportunities for himself. Along with a move into performances that require him to speak English as a native language, he says he is also ready to pursue some lighter projects after a string of “tortured characters,” finding himself at a turning point of sorts in his young but already prolific career. After years of submerging himself in his roles, the actor says he is excited to bring more of his own personality to the screen. “What I get really excited by now is characters who are way more full of life and who embrace the positive sides of life and carry much more light within themselves,” he adds. “I'm looking forward to embracing more of myself in the characters that I play. I'm quite happy as a person, I'm quite full of life.” Without giving too much away, he says that he sees himself having a “personal little breakthrough” with some upcoming projects, a testament to his relentless pursuit of new challenges to tackle. “That’s always been my goal. That’s why I moved, that’s why I’ve been working on it for so long.”

All the Light We Cannot See is now streaming on Netflix.