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Tight-lipped, bespectacled American character actor Basil Hoffman made his first screen appearance in Lady Liberty (1972). Hoffman was at his brusque best playing cut-no-slack authority types. He was, for example, ideally cast as the gloriously named Principal Dingleman in the TV sitcom Square Pegs. Apparently a favorite of actor-director Robert Redford, Hoffman has been prominently featured in such Redford projects as All the President's Men (1976), The Electric Horseman (1979), Ordinary People (1980) and The Milagro Beanfield War (1988).