Philip Seymour Hoffman starred in more than 50 films, winning an Oscar for his role as Truman Capote in Capote. He was also nominated for three more Academy awards.
“I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. That’s what I want to explore. We’re all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive, each of us knowing we’re going to die, each of us secretly believing we won’t.”
Philip Seymour Hoffman spoke those words as Caden Cotard, the obsessive theater director at the heart of the labyrinthine Synecdoche, New York. An immensely complicated and challenging film that gets increasingly lost in its own metatextual games — or navel-gazing, if you prefer — it holds together almost solely because it has Hoffman as its center.
One of the greatest actors of his generation, Hoffman could find the harrowing humanity in the most inscrutable of films. He took on the most difficult roles but never found himself outmatched. From broad comedy to dark psychodrama to spot-on impersonation, there was no human face Hoffman couldn’t wear.
Hoffman, who died yesterday from an apparent overdose — coming on the heels of his relapse last year after more than two decades of sobriety — appeared in more than 50 movies in his 20-plus year career, won one Oscar and was nominated for three more. He also had a prestigious career as a theater director and actor, earning three Tony nominations. To name each of his great performances would be simply to list each film he appeared in. He did not have bad roles.
A true character actor, Hoffman had as wide a range as an actor can and could steal a film with even the smallest role. His minor roles in The Big Lebowski and Boogie Nights — as, respectively, Brandt, the Big Lebowski’s obsequious personal assistant, and Scotty, a nervous boom operator with a desperate crush on Mark Walhberg’s porn star Dirk Diggler — are two tragicomic tour de forces in miniature.
His unsurpassed talent made him a hot property with the greatest filmmakers of his time. He worked with Spike Lee on Lee’s most underrated film, The 25th Hour, expertly toeing the line between ugly and pitiable and setting the tone for what is one of the director’s best films. He anchored Sidney Lumet’s final film, the ace neo-noir Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead; the scene where Hoffman silently and methodically trashes his apartment after his wife leaves him is a masterpiece of restrained, purely physical acting.
Hoffman won his Oscar for his lisping impression of author Truman Capote in 2005, turning in an actual performance where many others would have settled for mere mimicry. The cold snap of the author’s dry wit as delivered by Hoffman is a wonder to behold.
He could deliver a method actor’s emotional realism in one film and channel the commanding theatricality of Orson Welles in the next. He could keep up with the screwball back-and-forth of Aaron Sorkin — his role in Charlie Wilson’s War is a wondrous symphony of profanity — the piercing dialogue of playwright John Patrick Shanley, the big-budget action of The Hunger Games or the goofball antics of Patch Adams without missing a beat.
There are many reasons Hoffman’s death is tragic — most of all because he leaves behind a wife of 15 years and three children — but one is that the world has been robbed of so many potential Hoffman performances. At only 46, he could have had decades and dozens of films ahead of him. Instead, we are left with a handful of as-of-yet-unreleased performances to look forward to and treasure. His life and career were too short, but the legacy he leaves behind is unsurpassed in our time.
