A brilliant and varied career full of hidden treasures
PHILIP Seymour Hoffman was an actor’s actor — a virtuoso who inhabited his characters’ souls so intimately that he could never be typecast, or even become a true movie star. Not that he ever seemed interested in the latter.
It says a lot that Hoffman, who was a bulky 5foot10, won his Best Actor Oscar for “Capote,’’ in which he was thoroughly convincing as the famously diminutive, and tortured, writer.
More recently, Hoffman deployed his hulking physicality for another tour de force, as the imposing title character of “The Master,’’ loosely based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. His scenes with Joaquin Phoenix were like a master class in acting.
Though he delivered a wicked character turn as Plutarch Heavensbee in the topgrossing film of 2013, “The Hunger Games,” much of Hoffman’s best work (and he never did less than great work) was done in small movies.
He was typically brilliant in “A Late Quartet” as a second violinist who is cut to the quick when his wife, another member of the quartet, refuses to back his plan to replace the group’s ailing leader.
I met Hoffman at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival, where he was promoting “Love Liza,” an odd little movie in which, with typical skill, he plays a man who takes to sniffing gasoline after his wife’s death.
“It’s much more common than people think,’’ he explained to me. “It’s a poor man’s high that does a lot of damage to the brain if done over a long period of time . . . From what I knew of other drugs, I figured out what it would be like.”
That movie was written by Hoffman’s brother, Gordy, and the actor, who enlisted his friend Todd Louiso to direct, spent years trying to raise money for it.
Selfeffacing, charming and famously loyal to his friends, Hoffman insisted another pal, Bennett Miller, be given a shot to direct “Capote.” After Miller landed the
job, Hoffman took a showy supporting role in Miller’s next film, “Moneyball,” in extra support of his buddy.
There seemed to be no part Hoffman, who also had a formidable stage career, couldn’t handle on screen. He was a drag queen in “Flawless,” an obsessive stage director in “Synecdoche, New York,” a priest in “Doubt” and reallife rock writer Lester Bangs in “Almost Famous.”
People will be discovering Hoffman’s exquisite, littleknown work for decades to come: as a middleage writer — he often played older than his actual age — forced to put aside a rivalry with his sister to deal with their declining father in “The Savages”; a desperate man who cajoles his brother into a disastrous attempt to rob their parents’ jewelry shop in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” or his bravura turn as a flamboyant ’60s seagoing disc jockey in “Pirate Radio.”
This work all flew under the radar, as did his impressive directing debut with the lowkey romantic drama “Jack Goes Boating.”
Just Saturday, it was announced Hoffman had landed Amy Adams, who played his wife in “The Master,” and Jake Gyllenhaal for his second film as a director, “Ezekiel Moss.”
Also, Showtime last month said it agreed to pick up the pilot for “Happyish,” a series in which Hoffman would play a man with erectile dysfunction.
Hoffman apparently has just two films in the can: “God’s Pocket’’ and “A Most Wanted Man,’’ both of which recently premiered at Sundance.
I only wish there were decades more of them coming from one of the most talented actors of his generation.