Philip Seymour Hoffman once explained his approach to acting: “I look for the thing I really don’t want to find”
It’s undoubted that Philip Seymour Hoffman was one of the greatest actors of all time and delivered some of the most memorable characters in cinematic history. His filmography is littered with excellence, from Capote to Almost Famous and his unforgettable Paul Thomas Anderson collaborations in The Master, Boogie Nights, and Hard Eight.
During a 2002 interview with Charlie Rose, Hoffman opened up on his approach to acting, his tireless energy when it comes to giving his all to new roles (of which there are many) and whether or not he considers himself a “character actor”.
After a long deep breath, Hoffman said of his impressive filmography (even then), “I have to say I’m fortunate because I’ve been offered and given the opportunity to work on some great projects with great people. I’m definitely at a time in my life where I have been available and can afford to do these things and give my whole heart to them.”
He added: “That’s really why. It’s definitely not because I need to be doing a movie every other week; it’s because I’ve had the opportunity to work with these people. I’ve jumped at it.” Evidently, Hoffman considered himself to be in a position of fortune to be able to make any movies at all, let alone give some of the greatest performances of the last 30 years.
Rose then asked Hoffman about the notion of a character actor and whether Hoffman perceived himself as one. “When you talk about this, you hope you don’t sound pretentious,” he said, “but the fact is that I never saw it labelled as anything. I just came to it because I wanted to act in the theatre.”
“So I ended up in a college, and I ended up studying with some teachers, and I was kind of formulating what I would use to create what I wanted to do with these teachers,” the actor continued. “What I learned was that these people that I was going to play were not me. That’s the first thing I had to look at.”
Hoffman devised an approach to figuring out the demands of what a given character should be and how they might perceive their own life, their own failures and their own conquests, or as Hoffman himself puts it: “How were they similar to me and how were they different from me.”
“I had to cover those bases so I could understand what makes them different and what makes them similar and so I can create this person that is not living my life,” he said. “They’re living someone else’s life. So that’s just how I’ve approached it, and I guess some people would call that character acting, but that’s just how I approach acting, period.”
Later in the interview, Hoffman drilled the point home: “I look for the thing I really don’t want to find. I keep asking questions about the character and about myself back and forth pertaining to the story to get at some kind of truth I feel is the centre of the person’s engine. It’s like getting at something that will catapult whoever you’re playing into action.”
See the clip in full below.
