Very sad and unnecessary loss of a giant ~ an amazing actor ~ apparently, it's being reported that he died with a hypodermic in his arm ~ ~ rest in peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman ~ ~ Sooz

Philip Seymour Hoffman Found Dead In NYC Apartment
DEEPTI HAJELA – February 2, 2014, 2:45 PM EST

NEW YORK (AP) — Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won a best actor Oscar in 2006 for his portrayal of writer Truman Capote in "Capote" and created a gallery of other vivid characters, many of them slovenly and slightly dissipated comic figures, died Sunday. He was 46.

He was found dead in his Manhattan home, police said. His cause of death wasn't officially determined.

Hoffman, who was no matinee idol figure with his tubby, lumpy build and limp blond hair, made his career mostly as a character actor. He was nominated for Oscars four times in all.

In one of his earliest films, he played a spoiled prep school student in "Scent of a Woman" in 1992. One of his breakthrough roles came as a gay member of a porno 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 roles 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.

In "The Master," he was nominated for the 2013 Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role as the charismatic leader of a religious movement. The film, partly inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, reunited the actor with Anderson.

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

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's Tisch School of the Arts.

Trained in the theater, with a versatility and discipline more common among British performers than Americans, he was a character actor who could take on any role, large or small, loathsome or sympathetic.

On the stage, he performed in revivals of "True West," ''Long Day's Journey Into Night" and "The Seagull," a summer production that also featured Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. In 2012, he was more than equal to one of the great roles in American theater — Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman," a performance praised as "heartbreaking" by Associated Press theater critic Mark Kennedy.

"Hoffman is only 44, but he nevertheless sags in his brokenness like a man closer to retirement age, lugging about his sample cases filled with his self-denial and disillusionment," Kennedy wrote. "His fraying connection to reality is pronounced in this production, with Hoffman quick to anger and a hard edge emerging from his babbling."

AP National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report from New York.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/philip-seymour-hoffman-dead-apartment

I don't think people who are addicted to hardcore drugs are "assholes." They have an illness.

By an interesting coincidence, I just saw "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" for the second time on Saturday, the day he apparently died. (His body was found on Sunday.)

So sad. I remember seeing him for the first time (or at least when I noticed him) in "Patch Adams". He played that part so well.

Jim Carrey paid the most poignant tribute on Twitter:

- "Dear Philip, a beautiful beautiful soul. For the most sensitive among us the noise can be too much. Bless your heart." - Jim Carrey on Twitter.

I think those addicted to "hardcore drugs" have an illness AND are generally assholes.

I think Jim Carrey is right, but if you have children as Hoffman did he has a responsibility to them.

There is a 23 year old heroin addict in my hospital now. She has been here 10 days and she's denying that her heroin abuse has anything to do with her physical problems. "I don't know everyone is so hepped up about a little heroin, my tummy hurts soooooooooooo bad,"

I wish people would just call this as it is, suicide. Same with Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, the kid from Glee and so many others. It's not that the drugs make them feel good, it's that it makes them not feel. It is an illness, yes. As with any other illness you either fight it or give in to it. They made a choice. Screw the kids, I want this. Assholes.

sounds like what they call a "hot shot" to me. and i am not going to call this guy an asshole until i know more. nor am i going to explain that comment.

I think it's over-simplistic to say "if you have kids you have a responsibility to not die" -- as though one wants to die.

He had been in rehab. Did you know that? So obviously he knew he had a problem.

Is everyone who has a kids and doesn't get a flu shot an asshole? Afterall, they too have a responsibility to not die and by not getting a flu shot they might potentially catch the flu and die.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that is partly behavioral, partly physical. It can be managed by making some behavioral changes and by taking prescribed medications. It is fatal if not managed. Many diabetics benefit from education and support groups to help them make the necessary changes in their behavior. They will need to mange their disease for the rest of their life.

Oh, wait a minute. I meant addiction.

Sci - I think if you have kids you have a responsibility to them to manage your addiction. Loads of people know they have a problem and go to rehab and think that's the end of it. It's a day to day process; every day.

He had 50 bags of heroin (and suboxone and other prescription things) in his apartment. It's hard for me to believe that he was taking his sobriety seriously.

There is a real danger in romanticizing drugs and drug deaths. His death and others like his (Cory Monteith and Heath Ledger come to mind) are tragic, but they didn't have to be.

add to this drag racers, boxers, guys who parachute, soldiers, police men. all of these guys have high risk professions or hobbies. are they assholes if they have kids?

I don't know how you make that comparison mac.

There is no plus to heroin use. Even if he'd lived, what kind of dad would he be for his kids? High or whatever all the time is not a good parent. An addict parent (if they die or not) leaves a lot of wreckage.

any parent that engages in high risk things leaves a lot of wreckage if he dies doing it.

actually, we could go a lot further with this. parents with mental disorders. abusive parents. absentee parents. they all do a LOT of damage. i guess you would say they are all assholes? or do you reserve that distinction for drug addicts?

I don't think I directly called Hoffman an asshole. I said most addicts are both sick and exhibit asshole behaviors. Lying and manipulations are generally part of the addiction schema.

Heroin addicts leave a lot of wreckage even if they do NOT die. Untreated mentally ill parents are generally less than ideal. Can their behaviors qualify them as assholes? I am sure some of them are.

My cousin Molly was depressed all of her life. Loads of suicide attempts. Finally she succeeded in hanging herself in the basement, and her kids came home from school and found her. I'm not sure I would call that asshole behavior, but definitely not Mother of the Year.

Abusive parents generally move from assholes to monsters in my vernacular.

Absentee parents? That really depends on the situation. In some situations I think being absent may be the best for the kids.

could very well be.

We are talking Motivational Interviewing which is at the core of Solution Based Brief Therapy in my Social Work Skills class tomorrow. Lots of people know that they have mental health/addiction issues and know they should change but are ambivalent about making that change. Change is hard. The interviewing style is designed to show that there is life outside of addiction and that the client has and can use his/her strengths to change.

I am going to talk about Philip Seymour Hoffman's heroin death. I am very interested in hearing their perspectives. Last year there were several addicts and children of addicts in this class. One nice young guy with addiction issues said, "I thought I wanted to work with addicts, but after taking this class I don't think I should." I don't know what I did or said to dissuade him, but I reframed for myself that this was the right decision for him in the now.

i would love to hear what comes from that discussion- particularly the perception of kids with addicted parents. i have zero experience with that. none of my friends or associates have addicts as parents. so i have literally zero references to draw from. actually, that is not true, i do know of one: WS Burroughs, and he was a shitty ass parent.

I don't know what will come of it. It's very early in the semester, and they might not trust me yet. We'll see. We'll see how the role plays go, too.

I'll let you know.

I called him an asshole. Yes he knew he had a problem. He went to rehab for 10 days the last time. That's not a serious effort. He knew what he had to do for the kids and chose instead to buy a lot of heroin and inject himself to death because he was hurting over a breakup. Asshole.

I had one very vocal heroin addict in my class. He said he has 4 years clean time (not using) and while Philip Seymour Hoffman may have had 23 years clean that doesn't mean he wasn't one step away from using every day. The man also said there is a big difference between clean time and recovery. He belongs to NA and it helps him. He deeply believes you have to do the steps or you are just an addict who is abstaining.

We talked asshole versus ill. This is a SW class and a woman in the front of the class was offended by the asshole characterization. She said we have to consider the whole person and we cannot categorize a person an asshole because we don't know (and the media will not tell us) what he was truly going through. She also used the diabetes example. "My husband has diabetes and no one would call him an asshole for suffering through that." She admitted she has an addiction history.

We don't know each other real well yet. I think by the end of the semester I will talk more on the subject and more people will share. I did not specifically ask about children of addicts, but just about everyone shared that addiction touched their families and it put the entire family in chaos.

We worked today on OARS skills(open ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summarization) which are at the heart of Solution Based Brief Therapy. This class seems engaged and they are enjoying the part lecture/part workshop feel to the class. It was raining heavily but 23 of 24 attended. I consider it a success.

If this man,who I really didn't like as an actor, had such an addiction as he obviously did and chose not to seriously get help that he needed, maybe his children are better off without him. I look at drug addiction as a choice people make... its not a disease or an illness in my eyes. People don't make a choice to get cancer, become diabetic, ....people make a choice whether to take drugs or not the first time they take them.

I guess I'm an asshole for smoking too. I chose to start.

Yes people do not choose to be diabetic, but once they know, they choose how to handle it.......or not. If they continue to eat what they want, fail to check their levels, don't take their pills or shots, then they are just as much assholes as anyone else.

I like to see everyone as a human being with faults. Some people over eat, some (many) don't exercise, some participate in risky activities.We just had leading respiratory doctor here die when cliff jumping with a parachute not to mention the number of people who have died in skiing/snowboarding accidents/avalanches. He wasn't married and had no kids, but he certainly left a number of patients without his services.

To be honest, we are all assholes in one way or another, but are usually good at hiding it behind a veneer of civility and safe behavior.

Kathy, Grumpy also referrred to drug addicts as "assholes".

Hoffman went into rehab 23 years ago. He died at age 46. That means he started doing hard drugs when he was in his early 20s. At that time, he wasn't married and didn't have any kids.

It's not like he first started doing drugs in his 40s after his kids were already born. Were that the case, then, yes, I would agree he would have been an asshole.

As it was, though, he developed the illness before they were born. He wasn't an asshole, he was an ill man in need of help.

Additionally, just because a lot of drugs were found in his apartment also doesn't mean he was an "asshole". We don't know yet if he was seeking help for his addiction or not.

I guess only "perfect" people aren't "assholes".
So, who here isn't an "asshole"?