Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman
Hoffman in October 2011
Born	(1967-07-23) July 23, 1967 (age 44) Fairport, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, director
Years active	1991–present
Partner	Mimi O'Donnell (1999–present)

Philip Seymour Hoffman (born July 23, 1967) is an American actor and director. Hoffman began acting in television in 1991, and the following year started to appear in films. He gradually gained recognition for his supporting work in a series of notable films, including Scent of a Woman (1992), Twister (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Almost Famous (2000), 25th Hour (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), and Mission: Impossible III (2006).

In 2005, Hoffman played the title role in the biographical film Capote (2005), for which he won multiple acting awards including an Academy Award for Best Actor. He received another two Academy Award nominations for his supporting work in Charlie Wilson's War (2007) and Doubt (2008). Other critically acclaimed films in recent years have included Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), The Savages (2007) and Synecdoche, New York (2008). In 2010, Hoffman made his feature film directorial debut with Jack Goes Boating‎.

Hoffman is also an accomplished theater actor and director. He joined the LAByrinth Theater Company in 1995, and has directed and performed in numerous stage productions. His performances in three Broadway plays led to three Tony Award nominations: two for Best Leading Actor in True West (2000) and Death of a Salesman (2012); one for Best Featured Actor in Long Day's Journey into Night (2003).

Early life

Hoffman was born in Fairport, New York, the son of Marilyn L. O'Connor, a family court judge, lawyer, and civil rights activist, and Gordon Stowell Hoffman, a former Xerox executive.^[1] 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 part German ancestry and his mother was of Irish Catholic background; Hoffman was not raised with a deep commitment to either religion.^[2][3][4] Hoffman's parents divorced when he was nine years old.^[5]

Hoffman attended the 1984 Theater School at the New York State Summer School of the Arts. After graduating from Fairport High School, Hoffman attended the Circle in the Square Theatre's summer program, continuing his acting training with the acting teacher Alan Langdon.^[6] 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 theater company the Bullstoi Ensemble with actor Steven Schub and director Bennett Miller.^[7] Soon after graduating, he went to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction and has since remained sober.^[8]

Career

Film and television work

Hoffman in 2002 Promoting Punch Drunk Love

Hoffman's first role was as a defendant in the 1991 Law & Order episode "The Violence of Summer". 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 an unscrupulous 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 with 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 Todd Solondz, The Coen Brothers, Spike Lee, Cameron Crowe, David Mamet, Robert Benton, Anthony Minghella and Paul Thomas Anderson; 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 The Party's Over, a documentary about the 2000 US 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 in September 2010.

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. He received a second Emmy Award nomination for the Daytime Emmy Awards for his vocal work on the TV Series Arthur.

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, which he lost to Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men.

In 2008, he appeared in Synecdoche, New York, in which he played Caden Cotard, a man who attempts to build a scale replica of New York inside a warehouse for a play, and Doubt, in which he played Father Brendan Flynn, a priest accused of sexually abusing a student. He received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for the latter. He also received a second consecutive nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Doubt.

Theater work

Hoffman has also won acclaim for his work in the theater. He joined the LAByrinth Theater Company in 1995, and has staged and performed in numerous productions.

As a director, Hoffman has received two Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Director of a Play: one for Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train in 2001; another for Our Lady of 121st Street in 2003. Of the difference between acting and directing in a play, Hoffman has said that "the director’s experience is not the real experience...You are the most subjective person in the room. You have no objectivity. You have to take a couple of weeks off and then come back to watch it without telling anyone, and you will see it with different eyes."^[9]

As an actor, he first gained recognition in 2000 for the Off-Broadway play The Author's Voice, receiving a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play. On Broadway, Hoffman starred in the 2000 revival of True West and the 2003 revival of Long Day's Journey into Night, both leading to Tony Award nominations.^[10]

In 2012, Hoffman starred in the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, prompting the New York Times critic to conclude "that Mr. Hoffman is one of the finest actors of his generation is beyond dispute."^[11] He received his third Tony Award nomination as Best Leading Actor in a Play.

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 two daughters, Tallulah, born in November 2006,^[12] and Willa, born in October 2008.^[13]

Filmography

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Philip Seymour Hoffman

• Philip Seymour Hoffman at the Internet Movie Database
• Philip Seymour Hoffman at the Internet Broadway Database
• Philip Seymour Hoffman at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Philip Seymour Hoffman Biography
• NPR Interview (09/2005)
• Philip Seymour Hoffman talks about his role in Capote on the Tavis Smiley show
• Brandt Tribute Lebowski Podcast's tribute to Hoffman's character in The Big Lebowski.