HOW CAN YOU TELL THAT Philip Seymour Hoffman is the best known and most-beloved character actor working today? Well, for starters, people actually know his name. Character actors typically get stuck with the “that guy” appellation. They’re recognizable and do a solid job, but not good enough to bother learning their names. They’re the glue that holds a movie together; the professional actors who don’t quite have the looks or the charisma to be stars in show business. They don’t win awards, but the movie industry would fall apart without them.
Philip Seymour Hoffman started out as a “that guy,” snagging roles in big Hollywood productions like Scent of a Woman and Twister. In those movies he played virtual opposites–a preppy WASP at an upper crust boarding school in the first, a nerdy weather scientist in the second–and vanished into both completely. He was just that guy. Hoffman caught his big break when Paul Thomas Anderson cast him in Boogie Nights as Dirk Diggler’s pathetic hanger-on. Hoffman delivered a knockout performance as a confused boom mic operator; though his screen time was limited, his acting chops clearly weren’t.
