1991–1995: Early career After graduating, Hoffman worked in
off-Broadway theater and made additional money with customer service jobs. He made his film debut the following year, when he was credited as "Phil Hoffman" in the
independent film Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole. After this, he adopted his grandfather's name, Seymour, to avoid confusion with another actor. More film roles promptly followed, with appearances in the studio production
My New Gun, and a small role in the comedy
Leap of Faith, starring
Steve Martin. Following these roles, he gained attention playing a spoiled private school student in the Oscar-winning
Al Pacino film
Scent of a Woman (1992). Hoffman auditioned five times for his role, which
The Guardian journalist Ryan Gilbey says gave him an early opportunity "to indulge his skill for making unctuousness compelling". The film earned US$134 million worldwide and was the first to get Hoffman noticed. Reflecting on
Scent of a Woman, Hoffman later said, "If I hadn't gotten into that film, I wouldn't be where I am today." Hoffman continued playing small roles throughout the early 1990s. After appearing in
Joey Breaker and the critically panned teen zombie picture ''
My Boyfriend's Back'', he had a more notable role playing
John Cusack's wealthy friend in the crime comedy
Money for Nothing. In 1994, he portrayed an inexperienced mobster in the crime thriller
The Getaway, starring
Alec Baldwin and
Kim Basinger, and he subsequently appeared with
Andy García and
Meg Ryan in the romantic drama
When a Man Loves a Woman. He then played an uptight police deputy who gets punched by
Paul Newman—one of Hoffman's acting idols—in the drama ''
Nobody's Fool''. Still considering stage work to be fundamental to his career, Hoffman joined the
LAByrinth Theater Company of New York City in 1995.
1996–1999: Rising star Between April and May 1996, Hoffman appeared at the
Joseph Papp Public Theater in a
Mark Wing-Davey production of
Caryl Churchill's
The Skriker. Afterwards, based on his work in
Scent of a Woman, he was cast by writer–director
Paul Thomas Anderson to appear in Anderson's debut feature
Hard Eight (1996).
Twister, playing a grubby, hyperactive
storm chaser alongside
Helen Hunt and
Bill Paxton. According to a
People survey of
Twitter and
Facebook users,
Twister is the film with which Hoffman is most popularly associated. He then reunited with Anderson for the director's second feature,
Boogie Nights, about the
Golden Age of Pornography. The ensemble piece starred
Mark Wahlberg,
Julianne Moore, and
Burt Reynolds; Hoffman played a
boom operator, described by David Fear of
Rolling Stone as a "complete, unabashed loser", and has been cited as the role in which Hoffman first showed his full ability. Fear commended the "naked emotional neediness" of the performance, adding that it made for compulsive viewing. Hoffman later expressed his appreciation for Anderson when he called the director "incomparable". Continuing with this momentum, Hoffman appeared in five films in 1998. He had supporting roles in the crime thriller
Montana and the romantic comedy
Next Stop Wonderland, both of which were commercial failures, before working with the
Coen brothers in their dark comedy
The Big Lebowski. Hoffman had long been a fan of the directors, and relished the experience of working with them. Appearing alongside
Jeff Bridges and
John Goodman, Hoffman played Brandt, the smug personal assistant of the titular character. Although it was only a small role, he said it was one for which he was most recognized, in a film that has achieved cult status and a large fan base. but critic Xan Brooks highlighted the pathos that Hoffman brought to the role.
Happiness was controversial but widely praised, and Hoffman's role has been cited by critics as one of his best. His final 1998 release was more mainstream, appeared as a medical student in the
Robin Williams comedy
Patch Adams. The film was critically panned, but one of the highest-grossing of Hoffman's career. In 1999, Hoffman starred opposite
Robert De Niro as
drag queen Rusty Zimmerman in
Joel Schumacher's drama
Flawless. Hoffman considered De Niro the most imposing actor with whom he had appeared, and he felt that working with the veteran performer profoundly improved his own acting. and
Roger Ebert said it confirmed him as "one of the best new character actors". He was rewarded with his first
Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. Hoffman then reunited with Paul Thomas Anderson, where he was given an atypically virtuous role in the ensemble drama
Magnolia. and it was a personal favorite of Hoffman's. which he considered "as edgy as you can get for a Hollywood movie". He played a "preppy bully" who taunts
Matt Damon's
Tom Ripley in the thriller, a character which Jeff Simon of
The Buffalo News called "the truest upper class twit in all of American movies".
2000–2004: Established star in 2002 promoting
Punch-Drunk Love|alt=Refer to caption Following a string of roles in successful films in the late 1990s, Hoffman had established a reputation as a top supporting player who could be relied on to make an impression with each performance. His film appearances were likened by David Kamp of
GQ to "discovering a prize in a box of cereal, receiving a bonus, or bumping unexpectedly into an old friend". According to Jerry Mosher, as the year 2000 began, "it seemed Hoffman was everywhere, poised on the cusp of stardom". Hoffman had begun to be recognized as a theater actor in 1999, when he received a
Drama Desk Award nomination for
Outstanding Featured Actor for the off-Broadway play ''The Author's Voice''. This success continued with the 2000 Broadway revival of
Sam Shepard's
True West, where Hoffman alternated roles nightly with co-star
John C. Reilly, making 154 appearances between March and July 2000. and the actor earned a
Tony Award nomination for
Best Actor in a Play. As a stage director, Hoffman 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 121st Street'' in 2003. In a 2008 interview, Hoffman opined that "switching hats" between acting and directing helped him improve in both roles.
David Mamet's comedy
State and Main, about the difficulties of shooting a film in rural
New England, was Hoffman's first film role of 2000 and had a limited release. He had a more prominent supporting role that year in
Almost Famous,
Cameron Crowe's popular
coming-of-age film set in the 1970s music industry. The following year, Hoffman featured as the narrator and interviewer in ''
The Party's Over'', a documentary about the
2000 U.S. elections. He assumed the position of a "politically informed and alienated
Generation-Xer" who seeks to be educated in U.S. politics, but ultimately reveals the extent of public dissatisfaction in this area. In 2002, Hoffman was given his first leading role (despite joking at the time "Even if I was hired into a leading-man part, I'd probably turn it into the non-leading-man part") in
Todd Louiso's tragicomedy
Love Liza (2002). His brother Gordy wrote the script, which Hoffman had seen at their mother's house five years earlier, about a widower who starts sniffing gasoline to cope with his wife's suicide. He considered it the finest piece of writing he had ever read, "incredibly humble in its exploration of grief", but few witnessed this as the film had a limited release and earned only US$210,000. , who cast Hoffman in five of his first six films|alt=Director Paul Thomas Anderson Later in 2002, Hoffman starred opposite
Adam Sandler and
Emily Watson in Anderson's critically acclaimed fourth picture, the surrealist romantic comedy-drama
Punch-Drunk Love (2002), where he played an illegal phone-sex "supervisor". Drew Hunt of the
Chicago Reader saw the performance as a fine example of Hoffman's "knack for turning small roles into seminal performances" and praised the actor's comedic ability. In a very different film, Hoffman was next seen with
Anthony Hopkins in the high-budget thriller
Red Dragon, a prequel to
The Silence of the Lambs, portraying the meddlesome tabloid journalist
Freddy Lounds. His fourth appearance of 2002 came in
Spike Lee's drama
25th Hour, playing an English teacher who makes a devastating drunken mistake. Both Lee and the film's lead
Edward Norton were thrilled to work with Hoffman, and Lee confessed that he had long wanted to do a picture with the actor, but had waited until he found the right role. Hoffman considered his character, Jakob, to be one of the most reticent characters he had ever played, a straight-laced "corduroy-pants-wearing kind of guy". and along with
A. O. Scott, considered it to be one of the best films of the 2000s. The drama
Owning Mahowny (2003) gave Hoffman his second lead role, starring opposite
Minnie Driver as a bank employee who
embezzles money to feed his
gambling addiction. It was based on the true story of Toronto banker
Brian Molony, who committed the largest fraud in Canadian history. Hoffman met with Molony to prepare for the role and help him play the character as accurately as possible. He was determined not to conform to "movie character" stereotypes, and his portrayal of addiction won approval from the
Royal College of Psychiatrists. but the film earned little at the box office. Hoffman's second 2003 appearance was a small role in
Anthony Minghella's successful
Civil War epic
Cold Mountain. He played an immoral preacher, a complex character that Hoffman described as a "mass of contradictions". The same year, from April to August, he appeared with
Vanessa Redgrave,
Brian Dennehy, and
Robert Sean Leonard in a Broadway revival of
Eugene O'Neill's ''
Long Day's Journey into Night''. Director
Robert Falls later commented on the dedication and experience that Hoffman brought to his role of alcoholic Jamie Tyrone: "Every night he ripped it up to an extent that he couldn't leave [the role]. Phil carried it with him." Hoffman received his second Tony Award nomination, this time for
Best Featured Actor in a Play. Portraying the idiosyncratic writer proved highly demanding, requiring significant weight loss and four months of research—such as watching video clips of Capote to help him affect the author's effeminate voice and mannerisms. Hoffman stated that he was not concerned with perfectly imitating Capote's speech, but he did feel a great duty to "express the vitality and the nuances" of the writer. During filming, he stayed in character constantly so as not to lose the voice and posture: "Otherwise", he explained, "I would give my body a chance to bail on me."
Capote was released to great acclaim, particularly regarding Hoffman's performance. Many critics commented that the role was designed to win awards, and indeed Hoffman received an
Oscar,
Golden Globe,
Screen Actors Guild Award,
BAFTA, and various other critics' awards. In 2006,
Premiere listed his role in
Capote as the 35th-greatest movie performance of all time. After the film, several commentators began to describe Hoffman as one of the finest, most ambitious actors of his generation. Hoffman received his only
Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his supporting role in the
HBO miniseries
Empire Falls (2005), about life in a New England town. He ultimately lost to castmate Paul Newman. In 2006, he appeared in the summer blockbuster
Mission: Impossible III, playing the villainous arms dealer Owen Davian opposite
Tom Cruise. A journalist for
Vanity Fair stated that Hoffman's "black-hat performance was one of the most delicious in a Hollywood film since
Alan Rickman's in
Die Hard ", and he was generally approved of for bringing gravitas to the action film. With a gross of nearly US$400 million, it exposed Hoffman to a mainstream audience. Returning to independent films in 2007, Hoffman began with a starring role in
Tamara Jenkins's
The Savages, where
Laura Linney and he played siblings responsible for putting their dementia-ridden father (
Philip Bosco) in a care home. Jake Coyle of the Associated Press stated that it was "the epitome of a Hoffman film: a mix of comedy and tragedy told with subtlety, bone-dry humor, and flashes of grace". He next appeared in ''
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead'', the final film by veteran director
Sidney Lumet, where he played a
realtor who embezzles funds from his employer to support his drug habit. Mosher comments that the character was one of the most unpleasant of Hoffman's career, but that his "fearlessness again revealed the humanity within a deeply flawed character" as he appeared naked in the opening sex scene. The film was received positively by critics as a powerful and affecting thriller.
Mike Nichols's political film ''
Charlie Wilson's War'' (2007) gave Hoffman his second Academy Award nomination, again for playing a real individual—
Gust Avrakotos, the
CIA officer who worked with
Congressman Charlie Wilson (played by
Tom Hanks) to aid the
Afghan Mujahideen in their
fight against the Soviet Union. Todd McCarthy wrote of Hoffman's performance: "Decked out with a pouffy '80s hairdo, moustache, protruding gut and ever-present smokes ... whenever he's on, the picture vibrates with conspiratorial electricity." The film was a critical and commercial success, and along with his Oscar nomination for
Best Supporting Actor, Hoffman was nominated for a
BAFTA and a
Golden Globe Award. Hoffman again showed his willingness to reveal unattractive traits, as the character ages and deteriorates, and committed to a deeply psychological role. Critics were divided in their response to the "ambitious and baffling" film. Sonny Bunch of
The Washington Times found it "impressionistic, inaccessible, and endlessly frustrating", likening Hoffman's character to "God, if God lacked imagination". Conversely, Roger Ebert named it the best film of the decade and considered it one of the greatest of all time, and
Robbie Collin, film critic for
The Daily Telegraph, believes Hoffman gave one of cinema's best performances. Hoffman's second role of the year came opposite Meryl Streep and
Amy Adams in
John Patrick Shanley's
Doubt, where he played Father Brendan Flynn—a priest accused of
sexually abusing a 12-year-old African-American student in the 1960s. Hoffman was already familiar with
the play and appreciated the opportunity to bring it to the screen; in preparing for the role, he talked extensively to a priest who lived through the era. The film had a mixed reception, with some critics such as Peter Bradshaw of
The Guardian suspicious of it as
Oscar bait, but Hoffman gained second consecutive Best Supporting Actor nominations at the Oscars, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes, and was also nominated by the
Screen Actors Guild. Ben Brantley, theatre critic of
The New York Times, found it to be "exasperatingly misconceived", remarking that even when Hoffman is attempting to "manipulate others into self-destruction, he comes close to spoiling everything by erupting into genuine, volcanic fury". Hoffman also did his first
vocal performance for the
claymation film
Mary and Max, although the film did not initially have an American release. He played Max, a depressed New Yorker with
Asperger syndrome, while
Toni Collette voiced Mary—the Australian girl who becomes his
pen pal. Continuing with animation, Hoffman then worked on an episode of the children's show
Arthur and received a
Daytime Emmy Award nomination for
Outstanding Performer In An Animated Program. Later in the year, he played a brash American disc jockey opposite
Bill Nighy and
Rhys Ifans in
Richard Curtis's British comedy
The Boat That Rocked (also known as
Pirate Radio)—a character based on
Emperor Rosko, a host of
Radio Caroline in 1966. He also had a
cameo role as a bartender in
Ricky Gervais's
The Invention of Lying. Reflecting on Hoffman's work in the late 2000s, Mosher writes that the actor remained impressive, but had not delivered a testing performance on the level of his work in
Capote. The film critic
David Thomson believed that Hoffman showed indecisiveness at this time, unsure whether to play spectacular supporting roles or become a lead actor who is capable of controlling the emotional dynamic and outcome of a film.
2010–2014: Final years Hoffman's profile continued to grow with the new decade, and he became an increasingly recognizable figure. The low-key film had a limited release, and was not a high earner, though it received many positive reviews. However, Dave Edwards of the
Daily Mirror remarked that "Hoffman's directing debut delivers a film so weak I could barely remember what it was about as I left", while critic
Mark Kermode appreciated the cinematic qualities that Hoffman brought to the film, and stated that he showed potential as a director. In addition to
Jack Goes Boating, in 2010 Hoffman also directed
Brett C. Leonard's tragic drama
The Long Red Road for the
Goodman Theatre in
Chicago. Steven Oxman of
Variety described the production as "heavy handed" and "predictable", but "intriguing and at least partially successful". '' premiere in September 2011|alt=Refer to caption Hoffman next had significant supporting roles in two films, both released in the last third of 2011. In
Bennett Miller's
Moneyball, a sports drama about the
2002 season of the
Oakland Athletics baseball team, he played the manager
Art Howe. The film was a critical and commercial success, and Hoffman was described as "perfectly cast" by Ann Hornaday of
The Washington Post, but the real-life Art Howe accused the filmmakers of giving an "unfair and untrue" portrayal of him. Hoffman's second film of the year was
George Clooney's political drama
The Ides of March, in which he played the earnest campaign manager to the
Democratic presidential candidate Mike Morris (Clooney). The film was well-received and Hoffman's performance, especially in the scenes opposite
Paul Giamatti—who played the rival campaign manager—was positively noted. Hoffman's work on the film earned him his fourth BAFTA Award nomination. Many critics felt that Hoffman, at 44, was too young for the role of 62-year-old Loman, Hoffman admitted that he found the role difficult, A talented dancer, and Drew Hunt of the
Chicago Reader also felt that it contained Hoffman's finest work: "He's inscrutable yet welcoming, intimidating yet charismatic, villainous yet fatherly. He epitomizes so many things at once that it's impossible to think of [Dodd] as mere movie character". In 2013, Hoffman joined the popular
Hunger Games series in its second film,
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, where he played gamemaker
Plutarch Heavensbee. The film finished as the 10th-highest grossing in history to that point, and Hoffman became recognizable to a new generation of film-goers. The other was ''
God's Pocket, the directorial debut of actor John Slattery, in which Hoffman played a thief. In November 2014, nine months after his death, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1,'' was released, in which he had a major role. It was dedicated in his memory. At the time of his death, Hoffman was filming
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, the fourth film in the series, and had already completed the majority of his scenes. His two remaining scenes were rewritten to compensate for his absence. The film was released in November 2015. Hoffman was also preparing for his second directorial effort, a
Prohibition-era drama titled
Ezekiel Moss, which was to star
Amy Adams and
Jake Gyllenhaal. In addition, he had filmed a
pilot episode for the
Showtime series
Happyish, in which he played the lead role of an advertising executive. Plans for a full season were put on hold following his death.
Steve Coogan was recast in the role. ==Personal life==