He played an obsequious sycophant in the Coen brothers’s cult comedy “The Big Lebowski” (1998) a former child star pathetically desperate to reclaim his celebrity in “Along Came Polly” (2004), a romantic comedy that starred Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston a chronic masturbator in Todd Solondz’s portrait of suburban New Jersey, “Happiness” (1998) a snooty Princetonian in “The Talented Mr. He was a chameleon of especially vivid colors in roles that called for him to be unappealing. Hoffman’s prolific work life - which included directing and acting in Off Broadway shows for the Labyrinth Theater Company, a New York City troupe, which he served for a time as artistic director - undervalues his versatility and his willingness, rare in a celebrity actor, to explore the depths of not just creepy or villainous characters, but especially unattractive ones. agent especially eloquent in high dudgeon in “Charlie Wilson’s War” (2007) and as a charismatic cult leader in “The Master” (2012).īut citing the highlights of Mr. In supporting roles, he was nominated three times for Academy Awards - as a priest under suspicion of sexual predation in “Doubt” (2008) as a C.I.A. Hoffman does terminal uncertainty better than practically anyone,” Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times, “and he’s terrific in showing the doubt that crumples Willy just when he’s trying to sell his own brand of all-American optimism.” In his final appearance on Broadway, in 2012, he put his Everyman mien to work in portraying perhaps the American theater’s most celebrated protagonist - Willy Loman, Arthur Miller’s title character in “Death of a Salesman.” At 44, he was widely seen as young for the part - the casting, by the director Mike Nichols, was meant to emphasize the flashback scenes depicting a younger, pre-disillusionment Willy - and though the production drew mixed reviews, Mr. “I really thought this chapter was over.” “I saw him last week, and he was clean and sober, his old self,” said David Bar Katz, a playwright, and the friend who found Mr. Last year he checked into a rehabilitation program for about 10 days after a reliance on prescription pills resulted in his briefly turning again to heroin. In 2006, he said in an interview with “60 Minutes” that he had given up drugs and alcohol many years earlier, when he was 22.
Hoffman was long known to struggle with addiction. Investigators found a syringe in his arm and, nearby, an envelope containing what appeared to be heroin.
Hoffman was found in the apartment by a friend who had become concerned after being unable to reach him. The death, from an apparent drug overdose, was confirmed by the police. Philip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps the most ambitious and widely admired American actor of his generation, who gave three-dimensional nuance to a wide range of sidekicks, villains and leading men on screen and embraced some of the theater’s most burdensome roles on Broadway, died on Sunday at an apartment in Greenwich Village he was renting as an office.