Monday, February 03, 2014

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman

As I'm sure most of you have heard, one of our truly great actors passed away this past weekend. Philip Seymour Hoffman started out playing a mixture of prep boys and creepy characters on first Law & Order and then in films like Happiness, Next Stop Wonderland, Magnolia and The Talented Mr. Ripley. 

Cartoon by Signe Wilkinson -

Many began to notice his impressive acting chops, but it was Magnolia (a sensitive male nurse to a dying man), State and Main (an honest writer surrounded by crooked, cynical Hollywood stars) and Almost Famous (as the infamous, curmudgeonly Lester Bangs) that showed the range of his talent. From here bigger roles began to come his way, from his short turn as a two-bit con artist in Punch-Drunk Love to again playing a creepy high school teacher in 25th Hour to his brilliant portrayal of Truman Capote. 

Around the same time, he showed his adroitness at comedy as the obnoxious sidekick in Along Came Polly, in Amy Sedaris' vehicle Strangers with Candy and in the dark The Savages. And he continued to show his ability to move from one extreme to the other with ease playing a believable sociopath alongside Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible III, a flawed priest in Doubt, a manipulative brother in Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, a false prophet in The Master and an enigmatic revolutionary in the Hunger Games series.

Beyond these achievements, he was active on Broadway as both an actor (I saw him on Broadway in A Long Day's Journey into Night), director and producer. He made two to three movies a year and had just finished production on a television series. His real achievement was to make his characters so believable, so human in their flaws, pathos and even evil. Rather than falling prey to the actor's desire to always be likable, he felt unencumbered by that need -- instead finding the truth of those characters. A true character actor in an era of cult of personality where many of our "greatest" actors played themselves over and over again, he will be sorely missed. RIP.

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