Oscar winner Hoffman, 46, found dead

NEW YORK - Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2006 for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote and created a gallery of other vivid characters, was found dead Sunday in his apartment in what officials said was an apparent drug overdose. He was 46.

Glassine envelopes containing what was believed to be heroin were found with him, according to two law-enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the evidence.

The stage-trained actor was nominated for Academy Awards four times in all: for Capote, The Master, Doubt and Charlie Wilson’s War. He also received three Tony nominations for his work on Broadway, which included an acclaimed turn as the weary and defeated Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

Hoffman spoke candidly over the years about past struggles with drug addiction. After being sober for 23 years, he admitted in interviews last year to falling off the wagon and developing a heroin problem that led to a stint in rehab.

Tributes poured in from other Hollywood figures.

“One of the greatest actors of a generation and a sweet, funny & humble man,” actor Ricky Gervais tweeted. Director Spike Lee said on Twitter: “Damn, We Lost Another Great Artist.”

“Philip was a very important actor and really takes his place among the real great actors,” Kevin Costner said. “It’s a shame. Who knows what he would have been able to do? But we’re left with the legacy of the work he’s done and it all speaks for itself.”

“No words for this. He was too great and we’re too shattered,” said Mike Nichols, who directed Hoffman in Charlie Wilson’s War and Death of a Salesman.

The law-enforcement officials said Hoffman’s body was discovered in a bathroom at his Greenwich Village apartment by a friend, who made the 911 call, and his assistant.

Late Sunday, a police crime-scene van was parked out front, and technicians carrying brown paper bags went in and out. Police kept a growing crowd of onlookers back. A single red daisy had been placed in front of the lobby door.

Hoffman’s family called the news “tragic and sudden.” Hoffman is survived by his partner of 15 years, Mimi O’Donnell, and their three children.

“We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Phil and appreciate the outpouring of love and support we have received from everyone,” the family said in a statement.

In one of his earliest screen roles, he played a spoiled prep school student in Scent of a Woman in 1992. One of his breakthroughs came as a gay member of a pornography film crew in Boogie Nights, one of several movies directed by Paul Thomas Anderson that he would eventually appear in.

He often played comic, slightly off-kilter characters in movies like Along Came Polly, The Big Lebowski and Almost Famous.

More recently, he was Plutarch Heavensbee in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and was reprising that role in the two-part sequel, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, which is in the works. And in Moneyball, he played Art Howe, the grumpy manager of the Oakland Athletics who resisted new thinking about baseball talent.

Just weeks ago, Showtime announced Hoffman would star in Happyish, a new comedy series about a middle-aged man’s pursuit of happiness.

He was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Master as the charismatic leader of a religious movement. The film, inspired in part by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, reunited the actor with Anderson.

He also received a 2009 best-supporting nomination for Doubt, as a priest who comes under suspicion because of his relationship with a boy, and another best-supporting nomination as a CIA officer in Charlie Wilson’s War.

Born in 1967 in Fairport, N.Y., Hoffman was interested in acting from an early age, mesmerized at 12 by a local production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. He studied theater as a teenager with the New York State Summer School of the Arts and the Circle in the Square Theatre. He then majored in drama at New York University.

In his Oscar acceptance speech for Capote, he thanked his mother for raising him and his three siblings alone and for taking him to his first play. Hoffman’s parents divorced when he was 9.

On Broadway, in addition to starring as Willy Loman, he played Jamie in Long Day’s Journey Into Night and both leads in True West. All three performances were nominated for Tonys.

Two films starring Hoffman premiered last month at the Sundance Film Festival: the espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man and God’s Pocket.

Information for this article was contributed by Deepti Hajela and Hillel Italie of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 02/03/2014

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