- published: 18 Aug 2011
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Basil Harry Hoffman (born January 18, 1938) is an American actor. He has had a film and TV career spanning five decades mostly in supporting roles. He has starred in films with many award-winning directors, including Alan Pakula and Robert Redford. He has also authored two books about acting, including Acting and How to Be Good at It.
Hoffman was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Beulah (née Novoselsky) and David Hoffman, an antique dealer. He graduated from Tulane University with a B.B.A. in economics; and he spent two years at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, receiving a scholarship for the second, graduating year. His thirteen years of work in New York included many plays, some roles in episodic television, a recurring character on One Life to Live on ABC, hundreds of commercials and a film role in Lady Liberty with Sophia Loren, directed by Mario Monicelli.
He made his first trip to Los Angeles in 1974. In that season, he filmed a theatrical feature, At Long Last Love, for Peter Bogdanovich, two television movies, television episodes of Kung Fu, Rockford Files, Sanford and Son, Police Woman and M*A*S*H, and several commercials. He had recurring roles as the fingerprint technician on Ellery Queen and Principal Dingleman on Square Pegs.
The word asshole, a variant of arsehole, which is still prevalent in British and Australian English, is a vulgar to describe the anus, often pejoratively used to refer to people.
The word arse in English derives from the Germanic root *arsaz, which originated from the Proto-Indo-European root *ors — meaning buttocks or backside. The combined form arsehole is first attested from 1500 in its literal use to refer to the anus. The metaphorical use of the word to refer to the worst place in a region, e.g., "the arsehole of the world") is first attested in print in 1865; the use to refer to a contemptible person is first attested in 1933. In the ninth chapter of his 1945 autobiography, Black Boy, Richard Wright quotes a snippet of verse that uses the term: "All these white folks dressed so fine / Their ass-holes smell just like mine ...". Its first appearance as an insult term in a newspaper indexed by Google News is in 1965. As with other vulgarities, these uses of the word may have been common in oral speech for some time before their first print appearances. By the 1970s, Hustler magazine featured people they did not like as "Asshole of the Month." In 1972, Jonathan Richman's Modern Lovers recorded his song "Pablo Picasso," which includes the line "Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole."