Gaby Hoffmann

Hoffmann was born in New York City to actor parents. Her mother, Viva, is a retired actress, writer and former Warhol superstar. Her father, Anthony Herrera, was a soap opera actor best known for his role as James Stenbeck in As the World Turns. Herrera was raised in Wiggins, Mississippi by his maternal grandparents; his own father, Gaby's paternal grandfather, was of French and Spanish descent. Herrera died in 2011 from cancer. Viva and Herrera were estranged shortly after Hoffmann's birth; she was raised by her mother at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Her father did not have a significant presence in her life. Hoffmann's birth is documented in Pat Hackett's The Andy Warhol Diaries. An entry dated January 10, 1982, two days after Hoffmann was born, says a friend telephoned Warhol and told him they were going to the Chelsea Hotel to see Viva and her new baby.

Hoffmann's mother, the daughter of an attorney, was raised in a conservative and devoutly Catholic family in New York State. Viva was previously married to director Michel Auder in 1969, by which union Gaby Hoffmann has an elder half-sister, Alexandra "Alex" Auder, who teaches yoga in New York City.

Hoffmann attended elementary school in Manhattan at P.S. 3 on Hudson Street in the West Village, then another school in Hell's Kitchen. After she moved to Los Angeles in 1994, she attended the Buckley School, before finally graduating from Calabasas High School in 1999.