Philip Seymour Hoffman: The Life of an Award Winning Actor and Director

Amazing Info's | Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014) was born in Fairport, New York. He was a talented theater actor and an amazing director. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 2005 biographical movie Capote, as well as receiving three Academy Award nominations as Best Supporting Actor and also collected three Tony Award nominations for his theater work.

Hoffman attended the 1984 Theater School at the New York State Summer School of the Arts. After graduating from Fairport High School, he attended the Circle in the Square Theatre's summer program to continue his acting and received a BFA in drama in 1989 from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

He started his acting career in 1991, and the succeeding year he began to appear in movies. He steadily gained recognition for his supporting work in a series of distinguished films, including Scent of a Woman (1992), Twister (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), Patch Adams (1998), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Almost Famous (2000), Red Dragon (2002), 25th Hour (2002), Punch-Drunk Love (2002) and Cold Mountain (2003).

Hoffman played the title role in Capote in the year 2005, for which he won multiple acting awards including an Academy Award for Best Actor. He received another three Academy Award nominations for his supporting work in Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Doubt (2008) and The Master (2012). Several critically much-admired films in recent years have included Owning Mahowny (2003), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), The Savages (2007), Synecdoche, New York (2008), Moneyball (2011) and The Ides of March (2011).

As a director, he received two Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Director of a Play, one for Jesus Hopped the “A” Train in 2001 and another for Our Lady of 121^st Street in 2003.

“The director’s experience is not the real experience. You are the most subjective person in the room. You have no objectivity. You have to take a couple of weeks off and then come back to watch it without telling anyone, and you will see it with different eyes,” Hoffman said on the difference between acting and directing in a play.

As an actor, Hoffman first achieved recognition in 2000 for the Off-Broadway play The Author's Voice, receiving a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play. On Broadway, he starred in the 2000 revival of True West and the 2003 revival of Long Day's Journey into Night, both leading to Tony Award nominations.

He starred as Willy Loman in the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 2012, prompting the New York Times critic to conclude that "Mr. Hoffman is one of the finest actors of his generation beyond dispute." He received his third Tony Award nomination as Best Leading Actor in a Play.

Hoffman had a son born in 2003, and two daughters, born in 2006 and the other in 2008 with his partner Mimi O'Donnell, a costume designer. They met while working on the 1999 play In Arabia We'd All Be Kings, which Hoffman directed.