The genius of Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman was one of the defining actors of his generation: a complex and compelling performer, and one of the few who could make even an average film worth seeing. So it was with genuine sadness that we learned of his death from a suspected overdose at the age of 46. Hoffman must have been offered every Hollywood character role available. He didn’t take them. He lived boldly as an actor. What does it mean to be alive, aware, emotional, human? These are just a few of the questions he seemed driven to ask. What remarkable work might he have achieved in his 50s? Where could he have taken us as an old man of 80? And would he ever have fulfilled his promise as a director?
 
We'll never know the answers to these questions. But we can look back and marvel at his extraordinary body of work: a back catalogue that is at once challenging and entertaining, heartfelt and unsettling, insightful, generous, idiosyncratic and utterly singular. He will be missed.