Legend of stage and screen lives on 10 years after untimely death
▶ His passing at the age of 46 cut short a prolific acting career too soon, but Philip Seymour Hoffman should always be remembered for these stellar performances, writes William Mullally
Ten years have now passed since Philip Seymour Hoffman died. He was the first performer I called my favourite actor and, since his death, I’ve never picked another.
In the more than 20 years he shared his talents on stage and screen, Hoffman showed an uncanny ability to mine the depths of his characters – often strange, lonely, misanthropic or neurotic – to find corners of humanity that others would never dare.
In the 1990s, he was the scene-stealing support actor in
films such as Scent of a Woman,
Boogie Nights, Happiness and The Talented Mr Ripley, and by the 2000s, he was readily embraced as a leading man, never breaking under whatever weight was thrown on him.
By the time of his passing, from what was reported as combined drug intoxication, he was 46 and at the height of his powers and popularity. He’d won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 2006 for his role in Capote. In his final years he rose to even higher heights, elevating blockbusters such as Mission: Impossible
III and Hunger Games.
Those who loved him have never really moved on. It wasn’t just because of his skill, it was because of the sometimes unbearable honesty of his performances. He let us all into his characters, himself and our own condition.
Because of that, he feels like a friend of ours, even if we never met him. And I guess we just miss our friend. Ten years on from his death, these are ten of his best performances, in chronological order.
Boogie Nights 1997
While Hoffman might have caught attention in the early and mid-90s with standout supporting roles in both indies and even blockbusters such as Twister, it was his remarkable turn in Boogie Nights as the film crew member Scottie J, a man obsessed with winning the approval of Mark
Wahlberg’s Dirk Diggler, that really showed his ability to create a truly pathetic person in every sense of the word, someone who you feel deeply for and repulsed by simultaneously.
The Big Lebowski 1998
Gosh was this man funny. Playing perhaps the most uptight man ever put on screen, assistant to the ‘The Big’ Lebowski Brandt, Hoffman showed here his ability to not only create a memorable man in limited screen time, but his ability to harness his unmatched physicality to become the ideal comedic foil for a character opposite. It elevated Jeff Bridges’ terminally laid-back ‘The Dude’ in every interaction.
Happiness 1998
Perhaps the most disgusting character he’s played in a film that is perhaps the bleakest and most disturbing comedy made. Hoffman’s Allen in Todd Solondz’s feature is both a monster and a coward who is so pathetic at times that he becomes maybe the only character in the film you’re still rooting for by the time it ends.
The Talented Mr Ripley 1999
Hoffman was not just a master of the loser, unless you mean that in the strictest sense of the word. In Anthony
Minghella’s adaptation of
Ripley, he becomes a force of pure charisma and a formidable foe for the titular character. At least until it’s clear he’s met his match.
Magnolia 1999
Teaming up again with Paul Thomas Anderson, the sprawling Magnolia is a film that gets better each time you see it, and Hoffman is its emotional anchor. Here, he’s purely a force for good, a caretaker for a dying man who may be angelic in spirit but never feels ungrounded.
Almost Famous 2000
Be honest, and unmerciful. That’s the advice Hoffman’s character, the legendary real-life music writer Lester Bangs, gives the film’s protagonist, and it’s also the advice that seemingly sums up his own approach to acting. Though I never met Bangs, it’s hard to imagine that even the real man would feel as lived-in as Hoffman was here.
Punch-Drunk Love 2002
Hoffman could always play an antagonist you resent on the surface but can never truly hate. His performance here is brash and untethered, a perfect kind of child-like explosive masculinity, that is both oneof-a-kind and intimately familiar with the many out there who are like him, even at its most cartoonish.
Capote 2006
Here playing another real-life figure, this leading role is possibly his most widely acclaimed, as he embodied author Truman Capote in every frame, disappearing into a role like few can.
And yet, this was no mere Oscar season flex, as the performance is still quiet and understated, with subtle line readings that will stay in your head ever after.
Synecdoche, New York 2008
When writer Charlie Kaufman, who had gained fame for his ingenious screenplays Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, decided to finally take the director’s chair for his most ambitious work yet, there was really only one actor in the world who could have lived up to all he wanted this character to be. Luckily, he found him in Hoffman.
The Master 2012
This is his most bombastic performance and one of his most compelling. Supposedly playing a loose version of the creator of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard, Hoffman is commanding and terrifying, while still managing to imbue him with enough layers that make him inscrutable.
If you’re anything like me, this one may be your favourite, as long as it’s also the most recent one you’ve watched.