Tamar Simon Hoffs

Writer, producer, and director Tamar Simon Hoffs was raised in Chicago, and studied design at Yale University. After she and her psychoanalyst husband settled in Los Angeles and had three children--among them Susanna Hoffs, lead singer of 1980s pop sensations the Bangles--Hoffs entered the film industry at the suggestion of family friend Leonard Nimoy, who recommended her for a job on the crew of the Vic Morrow-directed 1966 indie "Deathwatch." In 1975, she co-wrote the drive-in gangster flick "Lepke" for producer-director Menahem Golan, followed in 1978 by the drama "Stony Island," which she also co-produced. Her first work as a director was a highly-praised 1982 short called "The Haircut," starring John Cassavetes as a music industry executive. Hoffs' daughter's band, then called The Bangs, had a small role in the film; Hoffs also directed the music video for their 1984 single "Going Down To Liverpool," which co-starred Nimoy as a chauffeur. As The Bangles became pop stars, Tamar cast her daughter in the lead role of the teen comedy "The Allnighter," her first feature; unfortunately, the little-seen film was critically panned, with Susanna's performance particularly dismissed. Hoffs returned in 2001 as producer of the animated children's series "Horrible Histories." In 2003, she produced and directed the dysfunctional-family drama "Red Roses and Petrol," based on a play by Irish playwright Joseph O'Connor and starring Malcolm McDowell. McDowell also starred in Hoffs' 2010 crime thriller "Pound of Flesh," which she wrote and directed.