We took him for granted, we really did. Phillip Seymour Hoffman came to fame in the late nineties and, almost overnight, became such a reliably unpredictable presence that we came to expect the unexpected and sometimes didn’t bother to show our appreciation.
Many of his greatest performances were in stupendous films that barely made their money back. The Savages (2007), Synecdoche, New York (2008), The Master (2012): these powerful, off-beat projects failed to connect with audiences. But that’s the beauty of cinema. Viewers have all the time in the world, now, to find out what they missed.
While Hoffman was a brilliant theatre actor, funny-dark movies were his speciality. And, in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson, he found the perfect conspirator. In playful porn epic, Boogie Nights, Hoffman is Scotty J, the gauche gay boom operator with a crush on long-schlonged superstar, Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg). When Scotty’s love gets spurned, he bursts into tears and groans, over and over again: “I’m a fuckin’ idiot”. He’s the patron saint of anguished idiots.
Todd Solondz, and the Coen brothers, also used Hoffman to electric effect. The sexual deviant in Happiness, the lick-spittle in The Big Lebowski... Thanks to Hoffman, these “losers” have all become cult heroes.
Physically, Hoffman resembled a golden, clumsy bear. Emotionally, he could play big or small. And he didn’t require lots of screen time to make his weird charms felt. He could pop up in classy but vacant dramas and, instantly, re-arrange the landscape (in The Talented Mr Ripley, and Almost Famous, his smart characters (italics) explode (italics) as soon as they open their mouths).
He also appeared in blockbusters (most recently, The Hunger Games – Catching Fire). And he was, occasionally, allowed to play leads. His fluttery, sad turn as Truman Capote, in Bennett Miller’s 2005 biopic, rightly won him an Oscar.
He should have won another, last year, for The Master. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award, but lost out to Christoph Waltz (whose performance, in Django Unchained, seems frivolous by comparison.) Hoffman’s portrayal of a cult leader - loosely, if obviously, based on L. Ron Hubbard - is so nuanced it makes your brain ache. Lancaster Dodd sets out to seduce a drifter called Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix), who yells: “Just say something that’s true!” And so Dodd spins words, desperate to fool himself, as much as others.
Hoffman, via his performances, kept saying something true. What a terrible loss.
