Philip Seymour Hoffman was an Oscar-winning actor with scene-stealing roles in over 50 films, but in the downtown Manhattan neighborhood he had called home for years, he was just one of the locals: the rumpled cyclist pedaling through the West Village, the father walking his three children to school, the actor poring over scripts or having a drink at one of his favorite low-key bars.
Nonetheless, as good as he was at fitting in, he drew notice when he showed up at the Barrow Street Alehouse following a 10-day heroin rehab last spring.
“I remember he had just gotten back from rehab, and he ordered ‘one half of a beer,'” says a neighbor buddy. “The bartender answered, ‘Phil, a drink costs three dollars. You can’t afford to go all out? Then we realized he was attempting not to drink by drinking only ‘half.’ Unfortunately, that isn’t how it works. “He simply couldn’t fight the demon.”
Sadly, the 46-year-old actor, who was respected by peers and fans alike for bringing complex characters to life on stage and film, passed away on February 2 after a decades-long battle with addiction. A friend discovered Hoffman unconscious in the toilet of his leased fourth-floor apartment at 11:30 a.m. after he failed to show up on time to pick up his children that day, and he died of an apparent heroin overdose, with police officials verifying he still had a needle in his left arm. More than 50 envelopes containing what seemed to be heroin were scattered about the flat, many of which had the ace of spades or ace of hearts symbol. (According to police, the marks are drug traffickers’ brandings.) While officials continue to investigate the origins of the heroin, Hoffman’s family and friends are devastated.
“This is a tragic and sudden loss,” his family stated in a statement. “We are devastated.”
While his former costars, including Nicole Kidman and George Clooney, paid tribute to the man Kidman described as “one of the greatest actor’s actors of all time,” condolences poured in for Hoffman’s longtime girlfriend and fellow Labyrinth Theater Company member Mimi O’Donnell, 46, and the couple’s children Cooper, 10, Tallulah, 7, and Willa, 5, who were living in a separate apartment at the time. “My heart is torn asunder for Mimi and their kids,” says Hoffman’s friend Adam Nelson. “Phil was a star. “The golden standard.”
He was also worried. Locals in his West Village neighborhood seen the actor in both joyous and seemingly gloomy private times.
“He’d go to Oliver’s Restaurant with his son Cooper. “They’d eat lunch and talk and laugh for hours on end,” claims a neighbor. “Then, by dark, you’d see Phil back at Oliver’s, bent over the bar, alone, and looking like a completely different man. “He appeared very dark and depressed.” A second person claims he saw Hoffman stagger into his apartment after a late night out, “needing to be helped into the building.”
However, in the days preceding up to his death, friends and neighbors noticed little symptoms of concern. When he went to Sundance last month to promote his film A Most Wanted Man, he was hesitant to conduct interviews, and several industry insiders felt he looked unkempt. But others saw merely a consummate professional.
“He looked terrific. “He was just a regular guy, which is what I’ve always admired about him,” recalls photographer Victoria Will, who captured one of his final pictures. “I saw him last week, and he was clean and sober, like his old self,” David Katz, the friend who discovered Hoffman’s body, told The New York Times.
Just the night before his corpse was discovered, he was seen at Automatic Slim’s, a local eatery where he and two buddies ate guacamole and hamburgers. His companion drank beer, but Hoffman just drank cranberry soda. The bartender stated, “He seemed fine.”
While Hoffman’s death came as a surprise, he had long been open about his struggle with addiction, admitting that he had initially sought treatment as a 22-year-old New York University graduate.
“You get panicked … and I got panicked for my life,” he told 60 Minutes in 2006. In 2011, he told The Guardian, “I had no interest in drinking responsibly. And I still haven’t. Just because so much time has gone does not imply it was only a phase. “That is who I am.” Last May, he stunned many in Hollywood by revealing that, after 23 years of sobriety, he had developed a heroin addiction after first using prescription narcotics. He spent only 10 days in a detox program before returning to a hectic filming schedule that included appearances in a now-defunct Showtime pilot, Happyish, and the final two episodes of the blockbuster Hunger Games series.
Hoffman was raised with three brothers in the suburbs of Rochester, New York, by his mother, Marilyn, a family court judge who divorced his father, businessman Gordon, while he was a child. Hoffman fell in love with the theater after watching All My Sons at the age of 12.
By his 30s, he was receiving Tony, Emmy, and Oscar nominations for a variety of roles (including an Oscar victory for 2005’s Capote), but he remained intensely self-critical. When people complimented his work, he said in 2006, “I’ll be like, ‘Thank you,’ but I won’t say the second part, which is, ‘You’re wrong.'” “It is not always healthy.” According to Matthew Warchus, who directed his Tony-nominated performance in 2000’s True West: “I believe the tortured aspect comes from his not settling. The audience benefits. However, for the artist themselves, having such standards is a mixed gift. “Nothing is easy.”
As hard as he worked on his own projects, he was as supportive of others’. “He could do anything he wanted to do, and last spring he directed an Off-Broadway play in our 90-seat theater,” Labyrinth director Danny Feldman explains. “He was always excited.” “He kept to himself, but he was warm,” recalls Jason Hayes, the film’s hairdresser. “You definitely knew he was a sensitive soul.”
One constant throughout was his love for his children. “They’re all he ever talked about on set,” Hayes recalls.
Deeply loyal to his children, who inherited his famed red hair, Hoffman was a regular at New York City’s Chelsea Piers sporting facility, where he attended his son Cooper’s basketball workouts every Saturday. “He was not a drop-off parent,” recalls Ryan Berger, a fellow father who had just seen him 24 hours before his death. “He was committed to what his son was doing.”
Now, as people who loved Hoffman say farewell and others who admired his work grieve what may have been, there is only regret at the loss of a “really bright person, a family man who made so many good choices,” says Warchus. “That’s the hideous part about addiction.”
Michael Ohoven, Capote’s producer, adds, “I can’t believe someone so clever and with such resolve could succumb to such a dreadful condition. All I can think about is him sitting up there, delivering one of his dark, loud chuckles.”