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Philip Seymour Hoffman
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Philip Seymour Hoffman (born July 23, 1967) is an American stage and film actor and director.
Hoffman began his professional acting career in television in 1991, and the following year began appearing in films. His work in a diverse range of supporting films roles brought him recognition over the following decade, and he achieved success in theatre. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his performances in True West (2000) and Long Day's Journey into Night (2003).
His performance as Truman Capote in Capote (2005) earned him an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
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Encyclopedia
Philip Seymour Hoffman (born July 23, 1967) is an American stage and film actor and director.
Hoffman began his professional acting career in television in 1991, and the following year began appearing in films. His work in a diverse range of supporting films roles brought him recognition over the following decade, and he achieved success in theatre. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his performances in True West (2000) and Long Day's Journey into Night (2003).
His performance as Truman Capote in Capote (2005) earned him an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Subsequent roles in The Savages (2007) and Charlie Wilson's War (2007) were well received, and he was nominated for several acting awards for his work in Doubt (2008).
Life and career
Early life
Hoffman was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Marilyn L. O'Connor, a family court judge, lawyer and civil rights activist, and Gordon S. Hoffman, a former Xerox executive. He has two sisters, Jill and Emily, and a brother, Gordy Hoffman, who scripted the 2002 film Love Liza, in which Philip starred. His father was a Protestant of German ancestry and his mother was of Irish Catholic background, and Hoffman was not raised with a deep commitment to either religious tradition. Hoffman's parents divorced when he was nine years old.
His first acting role was as Radar O'Reilly in Fairport High School's production of M*A*S*H in 1982.
Hoffman attended the 1984 Theater School at the New York State Summer School for the Arts. He received a BFA in drama in 1989 from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. At NYU, he was a founding member of the notoriously short-lived and volatile theater company the Bullstoi Ensemble with actor Steven Schub and director Bennett Miller.
He was college roommates at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with actor Steven Schub (lead singer of ska band The Fenwicks) and Jimmie Corrieri (guitarist of The Fenwicks). Soon after graduating, he went to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction and has since remained sober.
Film and television career
Hoffman's first role was as a defendant in a 1991 episode of the television series Law & Order. He made his film breakthrough in 1992 when he appeared in four feature films, with the most successful film being Scent of a Woman, in which he played a backstabbing classmate of Chris O'Donnell's character. He had been stocking shelves at a city grocery store at the time before landing the role and credits the film to kickstarting his career.
Hoffman has established a successful and respected film career playing diverse and idiosyncratic characters in supporting roles, working with a wide variety of noted directors, including Paul Thomas Anderson, The Coen Brothers, Cameron Crowe, Spike Lee, David Mamet, Robert Benton, Todd Solondz and Anthony Minghella; notably, he has appeared in four out of five of Anderson's feature films to date (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love).
He appeared in Last Party 2000, a documentary about the 2000 U.S. elections. Throughout his career he has rarely been given a chance to play the lead role. In 2002, however, Hoffman starred as a widower coping with his wife's suicide in Love Liza, for which his brother, Gordy Hoffman, wrote the screenplay. In 2003, he played the lead role in Owning Mahowny as a bank employee who embezzles money to feed his gambling addiction.
Hoffman has continued to play supporting roles in such films as Cold Mountain, as a carnally obsessed preacher, Along Came Polly, as Ben Stiller's crude has-been actor buddy, and Mission: Impossible III, as villainous arms dealer Owen Davian out to kill Ethan Hunt. Hoffman has played a wide range of roles such as: gay characters (Boogie Nights, Flawless and Capote), a lonely computer geek (Happiness), over-indulgent rich folk (Scent of a Woman, Patch Adams and The Talented Mr. Ripley), caring and nurturing figures (Magnolia and Almost Famous), vicious thugs (Punch-Drunk Love and Mission: Impossible III), sensitive artists (State and Main, Synecdoche, New York), and an outlandish CIA officer (Charlie Wilson's War).
He received his first Emmy Award nomination for the HBO miniseries Empire Falls, but lost to castmate and personal idol Paul Newman. One of Hoffman's earliest roles was as a police deputy who gets punched in the face by Newman in 1994's Nobody's Fool.
In 2005, Hoffman won widespread acclaim for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote in the film Capote. His performance received numerous high-profile accolades and awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture, and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In addition, he was also awarded Best Actor by at least ten film critic associations, including the National Board of Review, Toronto Film Critics, and Los Angeles Film Critics.
In 2007, Hoffman was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for playing Gust Avrakotos, a CIA officer who helps Congressman Charlie Wilson support a covert war in Afghanistan in the movie Charlie Wilson's War. In 2008, he was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the same role.
In 2008, he appeared in Synecdoche, New York, in which he played Caden Cotard, a man who attempts to build a full-scale replica of New York inside a warehouse for a play, and Doubt, in which he played Father Brendan Flynn, a priest accused of abusing a black student. He received Academy Award, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for the latter.
Stage career
In addition to his television and film career, Hoffman has been recognized for his work in theater. He has twice been nominated for a Tony Award: as Best Actor (Play) in 2000 for a Broadway revival of Sam Shepard's True West opposite John C. Reilly, and for Best Actor (Featured Role - Play) in 2003 for a revival of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. In 1999, he also starred in Richard Greenberg's one-act play, The Author's Voice, in New York. Hoffman has also distinguished himself as a director with off-Broadway projects such as Rebecca Gilman's The Glory of Living at the MCC Theater, and Stephen Adly Guirgis's Jesus Hopped the A Train, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, and The Little Flower of East Orange. Hoffman is co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company, along with actor John Ortiz.
He made his directorial debut in 2007 for the Sydney Theatre Company when he directed Hugo Weaving in Andrew Upton's Riflemind.
Personal life
Hoffman is in a relationship with costume designer Mimi O'Donnell. They met while working on the 1999 play In Arabia We'd All Be Kings, which Hoffman directed. They have a son, Cooper Alexander, born in March 2003, and a daughter, Tallulah, born in November 2006. In late October 2008, they welcomed a second daughter, Willa.
Hoffman is a fan of the New York Mets and the Buffalo Bills.
Filmography
External links
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- on the Tavis Smiley show
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- Lebowski Podcast's tribute to Hoffman's character in The Big Lebowski.
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