Philip Seymour Hoffman c/d?

An actor of real intelligence. I'm trying to think of anyone who could've played his loathsome snob in The Talented Mr Ripley; the role required him to be out of shape, a bit swollen, and, more importantly, effeminate, as if that was the reason why he loathed Tom Ripley. The moment when he realizes what Ripley wants out of Dickie is A+

one of the greats. RIP

Wait, he did a guest spot on PBS's 'Arthur' cartoon?

http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120315034634/arthur/images/1/1f/NPA_72.jpg

This is terrible news. RIP

he did snobs so well in early roles like Ripley and Lebowski that i thought he was gonna get stuck in that niche until he ended up playing a pretty huge spectrum of personalities

i fall in the camp of psh was my favorite working actor and this is absolutely gutting. just terrible news. feeling for his young family. i don't even know what to say.

RIP

that's lovely, johnny fever

rip

synecdoche is one of the very best films from the past decade or so imo and it's simply unimaginable without him.

in addition to major emotional intelligence, he had a really expressive face without having to move it very much

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HW9qVEVgWLE/UCF9ELkbPgI/AAAAAAAAFrg/riXQGhGNYGs/s1600/Philip%2BSeymour%2BHoffman.jpeg

Just one example of his transformative powers: His performance in Joel Schumacher's flawed, to say the least, Flawless redeems the whole enterprise. It's not even so much that PSH is "convincing" as a drag queen but that he's a goddamn force of nature.

a huge loss. RIP.

he did snobs so well in early roles like Ripley and Lebowski that i thought he was gonna get stuck in that niche until he ended up playing a pretty huge spectrum of personalities

― scott c-word (some dude)

re: this and clem's ancient blog posts i remember he did loser creeps so well (thinking of happiness here esp but scent of a woman and boogie nights have aspects of that as well) that i thought he might get stuck in that mode, i remember one thing i enjoyed about him and magnolia was how it played w/ this, that the typecasting was so apparent at that point you could turn a 'lol psh is ordering porn on the phone' scene on its head. was tempted to compare him to hackman in his ability to make anything watchable and this way he was a character actor that could just blow any trad lead off the screen w/o having to go big (thinking of mi:3 here) but he had a vulnerability that hackman rarely had and never just leaned on charisma the way hackman could sometimes. i'm sure someone can provide examples but thinking of river phoenix and then heath ledger and now hoffman from this generation, it just seems like a ridiculous waste, i can't immediately think of another generation of actors to lose this many giants or potential giants w/ so much work left on the table. obv hoffman got to fulfill his potential more than phoenix and ledger but 46 is just ridiculously too young, we should've had thirty more years of watching this guy.

I also really loved his sparkle and swagger when he got to play guys with a lot of ego and force. One of my favorite small roles is the sex-phone scam guy in Punch-Drunk Love. He's a total asshole, but so much fun to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE2FCCZ50VU

saw him onstage about three times, he was consistently exciting

just saw this news. a huge loss; r.i.p. was a singular-star from his appearance in boogie nights forward.

RIP, PSH

Not the news I was expecting today. Utterly tragic. He played an absurd amount of great roles.

awful news. great actor.

this is so sad. he was one of those actors you take for granted cos he was in so many movies and he always did a great job. one of my fave performances of his was in "before the devil knows your dead". not an amazing movie but hes just so excellent in it.

he was a leading star, too, but he showed how amazing it can be to focus a career on character/supporting roles.

this is devastating.

terrible, just terrible.

Always brought a certain 'je ne sais quoi' to his roles.

Was really looking forward to more of him. Ugh.

addiction is so patient and crafty and vicious, such a nasty thief.

Well this is shit. rip.

Nothing further to add, other than that hearing he passed in such a way makes it doubly painful. Similar feeling to when Heath Ledger died.

I remember seeing Synecdoche, New York blowing my mind to pieces when I saw it as an 18 year old. Rest in peace.

An actor of real intelligence. I'm trying to think of anyone who could've played his loathsome snob in The Talented Mr Ripley; the role required him to be out of shape, a bit swollen, and, more importantly, effeminate, as if that was the reason why he loathed Tom Ripley. The moment when he realizes what Ripley wants out of Dickie is A+

One of the most OTM things I've read is that PSH and Jude Law should have swapped roles, actually.

http://www.vulture.com/2014/02/edelstein-on-philip-seymour-hoffman-1967-2014.html

Eight years ago, I ate lunch with Hoffman in the East Village for a New York Times profile and had a small inkling of his demons. Capote had just come out and he was the favorite to win an Oscar. (He did.) He talked about what it had taken for a man with a big head, big body, and big deep voice to embody a man with a small head, small body, and bizarre baby voice—about the training that wasn’t unlike what he’d done as a high school jock (yes, he was a jock!), pushing his body and voice to places he wasn't even sure were in reach. And then he talked about the editing fights he’d had with his old friend, the first-time director, Bennett Miller.

When you hear about cutting-room fights, it almost always means the star thinks he or she is coming off as too unlikable and wants the director to ratchet up the vulnerability quotient. But Hoffman was arguing to make Capote less attractive—to make him, in fact, thoroughly reprehensible. He said he told Miller, “The way toward empathy is actually to be as hard as possible on this character.”

I said I had no idea what he was talking about.

“I think deep down inside, people understand how flawed they are,” he said. “I think the more benign you make somebody, the less truthful it is.”

PSH OTM. Fucking gutted here...

So fucking sad. And my sadness is mostly selfish: it really feels like a personal loss, to me, to be deprived of any more PSH roles/ performances... decades of them. Damn. There's just no one else like him in contemporary American cinema, no one comes close. Today, with him gone, it just seems to me a bleak wasteland populated by vapid pretty boys.

this . . . sucks

He said he told Miller, “The way toward empathy is actually to be as hard as possible on this character.”

I said I had no idea what he was talking about.

Edelstein is no doubt drawing him out, as this is a point so obvious that it's of course missed by lesser actors

Damn, this is terrible. Anybody who could play his "Happiness" and "Lebowski" roles in the very same year had to be some kinda amazing actor. Loved him in Morbs' favourite "Owning Mahoney" too. RIP

i had forgotten about his lebowski role until this happened---so perfect

Love Lebowski, but somehow his role in it never stands out for me. On the other hand: Synecdoche, New York, Boogie Nights, Happiness, The Talented Mr. Ripley, 25th Hour, Love Liza, Owning Mahoney--hell, he was even great in the otherwise worthless Mission: Impossible III. I have a feeling I might be able to add The Master to that list had I seen it yet.

Damn. Just...damn.

just wanna stand up for MI3 for a second here its pretty good

it's much better than the second one that's for sure but i thought in general ghost protocol blew it away

i remember he did loser creeps so well (thinking of happiness here esp but scent of a woman and boogie nights have aspects of that as well) that i thought he might get stuck in that mode

Me too. I wrote that blog piece very early, right after Happiness. Then he did a 180 and played just the sweetest, gentlest character imaginable in Magnolia; my feelings on the film have changed over the years, sometimes liking it more than at other times, but I've never wavered on how great he is. And whenever he needed to go back into creep mode, he did so effortlessly--found him scary in Punch Drunk Love. Thought his phone showdown with Sandler was the best thing in that film.

still need to see the master

I want to play something for my students tomorrow, think I'll go with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k0-pSCwcx4

I have to be careful about language, but I'm sure they can handle "hell of a disease."

Watched The Hunger Games 2 today, was thinking what a pleasure he was to watch in even a relatively minor and thankless role. Heard the news shortly after finishing the film. RIP, his was a career you felt was not yet near its apex. Reckon he had another oscar in him.

ugh. Haven't been this bummed out since DFW died.

It really is just gutting. It's weird how a guy can be so iconic yet so ... like PHS was. Many new him, but was he a star? He was a great actor, but I think easy to overlook. All sorts of contradictions, many no doubt because he was such a good actor he put the role first. (sorry, been drinking) Have there been any/many public statements? PTA?

He was one of the few universally agreed-upon Great Actors, among both casual film fans and nerds/critics, plus he was quite young, and seemed much more down-to-earth / less pretentious than anyone he might be compared with. This struck a very unique nerve.

Like, when Daniel Day-Lewis passes, I can't imagine people taking it this personally.

yeah...it's weird to think of just how famous and respected he was without seeming to make too many concessions to the business. like, if the closest thing to 'selling out' that he did was kick ass in a Mission Impossible movie and be pretty funny in a middling Ben Stiller movie,

Streep's a good comparison as far as range and fully embodying a character.

I never knew he had a problem, and I guess he was candid about it from what I heard today on the radio. I haven't really ever been sad about an actor passing, but this hit me today while driving. I keep remembering him in Love Liza.

Streep's a good comparison as far as range and fully embodying a character.

― tbd (Eazy), Monday, 3 February 2014 04:07 (3 minutes ago) Permalink

buscemi, too. (boardwalk empire, aside)

So sad. Addiction is horrible and scary.