Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman was an American actor whose two-decade career produced one of the most-respected character-acting bodies of work in early-21st-century American cinema — including the 2006 Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of Truman Capote. He was born Philip Seymour Hoffman on July 23, 1967, in Fairport, New York, near Rochester. He was a high-school theater enthusiast and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in drama from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1989.

His film career began with small roles in the late 1980s and early 1990s before his breakthrough through Paul Thomas Anderson's Hard Eight (1996) and Boogie Nights (1997). Through the late 1990s and 2000s he became one of the most-prolific and most-respected American character actors of his generation. Major roles included Anderson's Magnolia (1999), Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Almost Famous (2000), Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), and The Master (2012, his final Anderson collaboration, opposite Joaquin Phoenix).

His role came in Bennett Miller's Capote (2005), where his portrayal of writer Truman Capote during the 1959–1965 reporting and writing of In Cold Blood won him the Best Actor Academy Award at the 2006 ceremony. Subsequent Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations came for Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Doubt (2008), and The Master (2012). His parallel theater career — particularly his work as artistic director of the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York — made him one of the most-respected American theater-and-film hybrid actors of his generation. His Broadway work included three Tony Award nominations.

Hoffman struggled with substance addiction throughout his adult life and entered treatment multiple times. He died on February 2, 2014, of acute mixed-drug intoxication at his Greenwich Village apartment in New York City, at age 46. His death prompted substantial American grief from the theater and film communities and renewed public discussion about American addiction-treatment services. He left behind his partner Mimi O'Donnell and three children.

His name Philip is from the Greek Phílippos meaning "lover of horses." Philip has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names for over a century.