Monday, February 3, 2014

To Absent Friends - Phillip Seymour Hoffman

What a shock it was yesterday to hear of the death of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman at the age of 46.

An Oscar winner for his portrayal of author Truman Capote, Hoffman had been nominated three other times for Academy Awards.  The obituaries online and in the newspapers lists so many of his great roles...a priest in "Doubt", a CIA operative in "Charlie Wilson's War", a baseball manager in "Moneyball", and many other terrific parts that you may have forgotten over the years, but think about it, have you ever seen him in  a movie where he wasn't good? Throw in a Tony Award nomination playing Willie Loman in a revival of "Death of a Salesman" and you are talking about one of the great actors of this generation.

I will also site two other movies that I think are must see:  "The Savages" a movie where Laura Linney and Hoffman play an estranged brother and sister dealing with an aging father, and "Ides of March" where Hoffman plays the campaign manager of George Clooney's presidential candidate.  This was, in my opinion, perhaps the best movie I saw in 2011.

It was doubly sad that Hoffman, a one time drug addict who had reportedly been clean and sober since his mid-twenties, had apparently fallen off the wagon and died from a drug overdose.  What a terrible waste.

RIP Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

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