Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman has died of an apparent heroin overdose. He was 46 years old.
Hoffman was an “indicator actor” for me, much like Harry Dean Stanton was for Roger Ebert. If Philip Seymour Hoffman was in a film, then that was going to be worth my time to see his performance, if nothing else. The depth and beauty of his craft was subtle. You didn’t realize what spectacular care he was taking with a role until you were already walloped.
It was probably his performance in Boogie Nights, a sprawling tapestry of a movie exploring a splendid disaster of a surrogate “family,” that cemented that reputation with me. Indeed, I bragged on him in passing barely a month ago.
I have occasionally said for years, mostly for a sort of nervous chuckle, that it’s a good thing I wasn’t destined to be a rich rock star because I’d have been dead of a heroin overdose ten years ago. It’s stored shtick, filed under “morbid levity” or similar, but what gives it an edge with me is that it’s eminently plausible.
I don’t know what it’s like to be addicted to heroin. But I know what it’s like to be addicted to cigarettes, and I know what it’s like to enjoy the euphoria of a (prescribed) opioid. Imagining the convergence of those two sensations terrifies me.
So sorry for his friends and family (especially his children). RIP.
Photograph: Justin Hoch
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He was hammy in MI3, but pretty over the top weird wonderful in The Master. Recollecting some of his behavior in interviews after The Master, it kind of makes sense. We must now spend a sizable amount of our budget in maintaining Paul Giamatti and Steve Buscemi alive to give hope to normal looking dudes with talent everywhere. RIP PSH. Wish you had paid more attention to your character in Love Liza.
In what universe is Steve Buscemi “normal looking”?
Without cheating and looking it up, the earliest thing in which I can remember Philip Seymour Hoffman is the Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger scene-by-scene remake of the Steve McQueen/Ali McGraw The Getaway. I’d call the remake a mostly forgettable movie, though the cuckolding scene was way hotter with Jennifer Tilly than it was with Sally Struthers.
Hoffman did a good job in it as an aspiring thug, equal parts ambition and hayseed.
I remember him in Charlie Wilson’s War. May he rest in peace.