Born: July 23, 1967
Date of Birth: July 23, 1967
Date of Death: February 2, 2014
Raised by his mother after his parents divorced in Rochester, New York, Philip Seymour Hoffman's spare time in high school was mostly occupied by sports. En route to baseball tryouts during his sophmore year, he saw a beautiful senior heading the other way. He asked where she was going and she told him she was on her was to try out for a played called The Crucible. He put his mitt in his locker and never looked back.
After studying drama at NYU, he landed a role in Scent of a Woman (1992), followed by parts in Leap of Faith (1992), Twister (1996) and several indie films. Around this time, he met Paul Thomas Anderson, whose short film he'd seen at Sundance. The director cast him in a small role in Sydney (1996), and then wrote what would be a career-making role for him, the bumbling Scotty in Boogie Nights (1997), which was followed by Todd Solondz's critically acclaimed Happiness (1998).
Hoffman has won many awards for his work, including a Golden Satellite Award for his role in Flawless (1999), a Vancouver Film Critics Circle award for his work in Owning Mahoney (2003) and not only a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for portraying the title role in Capote (2005), but an Academy Award for Best Actor as well. He has since received two more Academy Award nominations: for Charlie Wilson's War (2007)and for Doubt (2008). The high-profile roles have continued to come through for Hoffman, including a role in the Oscar-nominated films The Ides of March (2011) and Moneyball (2011). He also appeared in not one, but two films featured in the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, The Master and A Late Quartet, plus a secured spot in the highly-anticipated sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013). For his work in The Master, he went on to received his fourth Academy Award nomination. He most recently appeared in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 (2014) and in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015).
Philip Seymour Hoffman died at the age of 46 on February 2, 2014. He was found in the bathroom of his New York City apartment with a needle still in his arm.
Filmography:
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015)