The “incomparable” director Philip Seymour Hoffman called the best he ever worked with
There are some talents that are almost unfathomable to have lost at an earlier stage than they should have been; musically, they are innumerable – Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse.
They’re perhaps fewer in the acting realm but alongside names like Heath Ledger and James Gandolfini is without a doubt one of the greatest in Philip Seymour Hoffman.
He was tragically young at 46 when he was found dead in the West Village in New York in 2014, a victim of a drug overdose, but he had been doing what he was born to do long enough to have left a body of work that stands up to almost anyone who appeared on the big screen.
One of, if not the finest, supporting actors in history, Hoffman neatly flitted between independent films and blockbusters that would keep the bills paid, he was a mainstream actor in movies including Twister and Mission Impossible III, but critically acclaimed thanks to his performances in far more challenging films like Charlie Kaufman’s Synedoche, New York and the Adam Sandler comedy Punch-Drunk Love.
The director of the latter film, Paul Thomas Anderson, is another movie creative who has managed to pull the same trick: make films that can be wildly popular but retain the artistic freedom and expression of someone operating outside the requirements and expectations of a major studio. Since his breakthrough with 1997’s Boogie Nights, Anderson has made some indisputable classics, most recently in the Golden Globe-winning One Battle After Another.
He directed Hoffman in five movies: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Punch-Drunk, Magnolia and finally 2012’s The Master. In conversation with Esquire the year before his death, Hoffman was asked about Anderson’s ability to spot talent and said, “Paul Thomas Anderson is incomparable. People who are honest about their humanity can do that”.
Adding, “I think Paul’s honest about who humans are. I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it’s not about you at the end of the day. He knows what he’s good at. That’s the thing about Paul. And what he’s good at he’s better at than probably anybody.”
While not as commercially successful as some of Anderson’s other films, The Master is considered one of his best and definitely contains some of the best performances; both Joaquin Phoenix and Hoffman were individually Oscar-nominated, as was Amy Adams for ‘Best Supporting Actress’.
A period drama that takes in cults, post-traumatic stress disorder, Pynchon and more, it ranks as Anderson’s favourite of the films he’s made thus far and drew immediate comparisons to Scientology. It would prove to be one of Hoffman’s final major performances; he made just four more movies after the film’s release in 2012.
Meanwhile, there is no update on which project Anderson will take on next, but One Battle After Another is widely tipped to have more success at the Oscars in March. Anderson won ‘Best Director’ for OBAA at the Golden Globes, with the film taking the top prize for ‘Best Comedy or Musical’. Teyana Taylor won a third award for ‘Best Supporting Actress’, and the film also picked up the gong for Anderson’s screenplay, which he based on the 1990 novel Vineland by reclusive author Thomas Pynchon.
