On Feb. 2, American cinema lost one of its finest contemporary actors when Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead of a suspected heroin overdose in his apartment in New York City. A modern icon on the screen, Hoffman’s career had nowhere to go but up, until it was tragically cut short.
This isn’t the first time a fine actor has fallen victim to drugs in recent years. Perhaps most notably – and eerily – similar is Heath Ledger, who died in 2008. Like Ledger, Hoffman left us way too soon, but not without a wide resume of performances by which to remember him. Like Ledger’s final complete performance as one of the most terrifying villains of recent memory in “The Dark Knight,” one of Hoffman’s final performances was in a hit film series, as head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee in “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” (At the time of his death, Hoffman allegedly was close to finishing his work on the two-part series finale, “Mockingjay”.)
But Hoffman, like Ledger, shouldn’t be defined by his final decisions. Instead, he should be known for the massive, varied body of work he gave movie fans throughout his career and the performances he gave. Debuting as a college student in “Scent of a Woman” in 1992, Hoffman first caught the eyes of commercial audiences in the 1996 hit “Twister,” where he starred as an energetic storm chaser alongside Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, he turned in multiple smaller, yet no less stellar, performances as a supporting cast member, including a personal assistant in the Coen brothers’ cult classic “The Big Lebowski” to a sympathetic nurse in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia.”
After his Oscar win in 2005, Hoffman’s career became even more high-profile, if it wasn’t already.
He picked up three more Oscar nods for his supporting performances in “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Doubt” and “The Master” and provided his own special brand of chameleonic acting in acclaimed hits “Moneyball,” “The Ides of March” and “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.” His final films, “Mockingjay,” the spy thriller “A Most Wanted Man” and the Sundance drama “God’s Pocket,” are all due to hit the screens within the next two years.
What makes Hoffman’s untimely death so sad isn’t just the way he went, but also the fact that few actors could give a consistently great performance like he could. Whether playing the villain in “Mission: Impossible III” or facing off against Meryl Streep’s head nun as a priest accused of a terrible crime in “Doubt,” Hoffman’s talents were always on display, and as a viewer, it’s easy to see how he put everything he had into every performance.
But maybe one of the most iconic Hoffman moments is in “Almost Famous,” where he delivers a line that encapsulates more than just a warning. In a late-night conversation with the main character William (Patrick Fugit), an aspiring journalist, Hoffman’s character, Lester Bangs, gives the “uncool” William some words of wisdom.
“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we’re uncool,” he says. With the matter-of-fact delivery, Hoffman tells the audience something. He’s telling us to not worry about being different and not losing our own identities for anyone else, but rather to go for the relationships with those who take us for who we are. Even now, as the film itself has ascended to the status of a coming-of-age classic, that scene still stands as one of the film’s best and isn’t just a great movie quote, but a little slice of lifestyle delivered by a great actor.
Philip Seymour Hoffman may be gone, but he surely won’t be forgotten. He will be missed, and thanks to his wide array of performances and immense talent, he will go down as one of the greatest actors to hit the screen.
