Louis Hofmann was born in the Bensberg district of Bergisch Gladbach, and grew up in Cologne. His early life was marked by his first appearance on TV for Servicezeit (1997),an evening magazine program on WDR Fernsehen television network. Two years later, he decided to pursue a career in acting and applied to an acting agency, subsequently being represented by Agentur Schwarz.
Hofmann's early work in television included guest-starring roles in legal comedy-drama Danni Lowinski (2010) and television series Der verlorene Vater (2010). He also appeared in the television film Tod in Istanbul (2010) and the TV series Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei (1996).
In 2011, Hofmann landed his first cinematic leading role in Tom Sawyer, a film adaptation of Mark Twain's classic novel. Along with Leon Seidel, who played the role of Huck Finn, he sang on the soundtrack of the film in the song, "Barfuß Gehen" ("Going Barefoot"),and reprised his character in The Adventures of Huck Finn (2012).
Hofmann's subsequent work in television included a guest-starring role in an episode of the series Stolberg (2006) and a leading role in the comedy The Almost Perfect Man (2013),which began on October 24, 2013.
In 2015, Hofmann played the role of Wolfgang in the film Sanctuary, earning him the 2015 Bavarian Film Prize as Best Newcomer Actor and the 2016 German Actors Award (Deutscher Schauspielerpreis) in the newcomer category. His role as a German prisoner of war in the Danish-German co-production Land of Mine (2015) earned him the Best Supporting Actor prize at Denmark's Bodil Awards in 2016.
Hofmann's work in 2016 included the role of Phil in Center of My World, a coming-of-age romantic drama film directed by Jakob M. Erwa, based on the 1998 bestselling novel The Centre of the World by Andreas Steinhöfel. He was presented with a European Shooting Stars Award at Berlinale 2017 by the European Film Promotion organization.
In 2017, Hofmann played the lead role of Jonas Kahnwald in the science fiction thriller Dark, released on Netflix on December 1, 2017, and followed by two seasons. Dark was one of four projects Hofmann played in a single year, two of them in English.
Hofmann's most recent work includes the lead role in the German film Prelude (2019),a film about a piano student named David who is going through the torments of first love. Hofmann himself described this picture as "a mixture of the films Whiplash and Black Swan". In an interview, he admitted that only after this film did he realize what character parts he is drawn to: to a dramatic, suffering character overwhelmed by life circumstances.
