He was considered one of the best actors of his generation, an actor whose ability to transition between dynamic characters seemed effortless. He was an inspiration to many, and the whole reason many films became as successful as they were.
Two years ago today, Philip Seymour Hoffman died a bleak, tragic death that shocked the world.
Join me, as we take a look at a life that defined the art of acting, and a man who – in stark contrast with much of Hollywood – worked for the love of the work, not the money that followed.
PECULIAR BEGINNINGS
In his early years, acting was merely on the peripheral’s of Hoffman’s vision. His real interest was in sports, though he wasn’t particularly good. In 2006, Psychology Today shared an incredible story that Hoffman said allows him to ‘maintain perspective’.
“Philip Seymour Hoffman is 13 years old, just over five feet tall and losing a wrestling match, badly…his mother is watching him fail. Suddenly, she scrambles to her hands and knees on the corner of the mat, looks him dead in the eye and cries, “Get up, get up,” pounding her fists on the floor for emphasis. He glares back at her. “I can’t! I can’t!” he screams.”
At age 12, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s mother took him to a performance of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. It was a revolution to the young boy, who had never experienced such theatricals.
Two years later, Hoffman was forced to abandon his sporting activities after receiving a neck injury. Lamenting his misfortune, he stood in the halls of his school, considering his future, when a beautiful girl walked by, discussing how she wanted to audition for a play.
So it was decided. Philip Seymour Hoffman was going to join drama class, and become an actor.
GENUINE PASSION
It’s rare for someone in the arts to say their parents supported their career choice, but Hoffman’s mother did just that.
At 17, he attended the New York State Summer School of the Arts. Even though his initial decision to act was inspired by a simple crush, Bennett Miller – who met Hoffman at the camp and would later direct him in Capote – recalls: “We were attracted to the fact that he was genuinely serious about what he was doing.”
Hoffman was accepted into New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts, and graduated with a degree in drama at the age of 22.
Immediately, he focused on performing on the stage that had enraptured him a decade past. He began appearing in off-Broadway shows while supporting himself with various customer service jobs.
A LOVE FOR STAGE AND SCREEN
Over the next year, Hoffman took bit parts in film and television roles, starting with an episode of Law and Order in 1991.
When the chance to appear in Al Pacino-lead Scent of a Woman came about, he was intent on grabbing it. He auditioned for the role of George Willis Jr., a role that would allow him to leave his job at a delicatessen to become a full-time actor.
Even as he starred in films alongside the likes of Paul Newman, John Cusack, and Alec Baldwin, Hoffman’s connection to the theatre remained strong. He joined the LAByrinth Theatre Company in 1995 – a company he would go on to co-direct – and spent the year on the stage rather than the screen.
CLOSE COLLABORATION
Paul Thomas Anderson remembers the moment he fell in love with Philip Seymour Hoffman: “When I saw him for the first time in Scent of a Woman, I just knew what true love was. I knew what love at first sight was. It was the strangest feeling sitting in a movie theatre and thinking ‘he’s for me and I’m for him.’ …Something happened when I saw him.”
The pair would work together on five of PTA’s six films produced before Hoffman’s death, with the first, Hard Eight, coming in 1996. Anderson wrote the role of a young, obnoxious gambler specifically for Hoffman, based on the kind of roles he was playing at the time.
In the same year, Hoffman appeared in one of the year’s biggest blockbusters, Twister. A social media survey following his death revealed that people most associated Hoffman with his role as the whacky storm chaser Dusty, but there’s no doubt that the collaboration between Hoffman and Anderson was the most critical of his career as an indie icon.
Anderson followed up Hard Eight with Boogie Nights, the cult-classic set during the golden age of pornography. Hoffman played a boom operator whose hopeless attempts to seduce Mark Whalberg’s Dirk Diggler became, to many, the highlight of the film.
SUFFERING FOR THE CRAFT
The Boogie Nights role proved what Hoffman was capable of, and his wholehearted attitude towards acting.
In 1998, Hoffman starred in Happiness. Playing the character of Allen, the role required a scene in which Hoffman had to masturbate in his boxers while making a lewd phone call to a woman. He recalls with some embarrassment how he felt during the shoot: “It’s hard to sit in your boxers and jerk off in front of people for three hours. I was pretty heavy, and I was afraid that people would laugh at me.”
The ability to accept his vulnerability for the sake of his craft permeated Hoffman’s performances as he rose to ‘anti-stardom’. In the depths of his soul was a seemingly unlimited amount of empathy and understanding for all kinds of characters. From his respectful role as a drag queen in Flawless to the snide but relatable bully in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Hoffman never resorted to cliche.
This was never more obvious than when Hoffman played writer Truman Capote in Capote. His delicate, sentimental performance saw him defined as one of the most daring actors of the time. He went on to win a legion of awards for the performance, including an Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA, SAG Award.
IN DARKNESS
Over the next decade, Hoffman would play a range of dark and challenging characters: a realtor who embezzles money from his boss to fuel his drug addiction in Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, a priest accused of sexual abuse in Doubt, and a charismatic ‘religious’ leader in The Master (the last two of which saw him nominated for Academy Awards).
He moved between leading and supporting roles, more interested in the reward of good work than the reward of a big payday.
It was during this period that Hoffman revealed his own troubled past with drugs. In a 2006 interview with 60 Minutes, he admitted to using “anything I could get my hands on. I liked it all.”
After graduating from NYU, he had entered rehab, and stayed clean but for a slight relapse in 2013.
Hoffman criticised the emphasis put on his battle with addiction in the edited interview, claiming that it was a short, irrelevant period of his life.
DEPARTURE
On February 2, 2014, Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead in a rented Manhattan apartment.
He had died, alone, a syringe in his arm, and a cocktail of drugs in his bloodstream.
His death came as a massive shock to the industry and Hoffman’s fans. They lamented the loss not only of a courageous actor who still had so much to offer, but as a charitable father of three young children.
Writer David Bar Katz, who had found Hoffman’s body, set up The American Playwright Foundation in his memory. The foundation awards an annual prize, The Relentless Prize, of $45,000 to the author of a high-quality, un-produced play.
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There’s no doubt that Philip Seymour Hoffman made every film and theatre performance he appeared in, even the bad ones, better. On screen and stage, he was a marvel, dedicated to his art.
Away from the public eye, he battled his demons for decades. The motive behind his senseless death will never be known, but we can only hope that the loss we continue to feel stands as a testament to the value of life that he reminded us of in every one of his nuanced, so very human, roles.
What’s your favourite Philip Seymour Hoffman performance? Let us know in the comments.