Philip Seymour Hoffman
A terrible shame, as the clichés have it, about Phil Hoffman.
I haven’t thought closely about this, but he might have been my favorite actor of my generation. I like to think that I was on the Hoffman train early–when I was in high school, he stuck out in one of the better Law & Order episodes, along with Billy from from Ally McBeal (Gil Bellows; how funny to have as young guest stars two future leading men; Dick Wolfe’s casting directors have always been money).
Hoffman added to Twister in a meaningless role (looking back today, it’s really something how much acting talent was hanging around the production; I suspect they all bought houses because of it) and blew the screen open during his short scene at the craps table in Sydney (otherwise known as Hard Eight). During the years when movies meant the most to me, Hoffman was a regular treat and the only times I winced were when he occasionally went took Oscar bait in flicks like Love Liza. But even then, I didn’t blame him for it.
That said, my two favorite Hoffman performances were in lesser movies.
The first was in the third Mission: Impossible where Hoffman played the villain. It was a remarkable piece of work because Hoffman’s character had two key aspects which cut against one another. First, he had to be kind of a nobody–remember, in the movie Hoffman isn’t the target, he’s just a mid-level bad guy being used to get to the big fish. But then the movie goes sideways when Hoffman’s character decides to get revenge and suddenly Hoffman has to play the heavy. And boy, does he. It’s not often that Tom Cruise has someone on screen with him who becomes the entire center of gravity on the frame. But Hoffman did just that. It was a neat trick.
But my favorite perf came in the otherwise forgettable Talented Mr. Ripley. Hoffman played Freddie Miles, a dumb, rich bully who becomes the first victim of Matt Damon’s Ripley.
In the scene which seals his fate, Miles is baiting Ripley, taunting him for being a peeping Tom. But suddenly Miles realizes, on an unconscious level, that Tom Ripley isn’t what he seems. There’s a moment when you see this recognition flicker in his eyes and what makes the turn so brilliant is that Freddie Miles doesn’t see through Ripley because he’s clever. So often in life big, stupid bullies seem to come hardwired with a reptilian sense of self-preservation–they can just sense when they’re in real danger. And Hoffman showed exactly that with Freddie Miles: He realizes that he’s in danger, even if he doesn’t quite know why he knows it. It’s a sensational bit of acting, and really the only thing special about the production.
