None of our generation’s character actors were quite as brilliant as Philip Seymour Hoffman. From his breakthrough in Jan de Bont’s Twister as the comic relief Dusty to his work with Paul Thomas Anderson and beyond, he was the rare character actor that was so damn good he became a leading man. Tragically, he passed away in 2014, and it’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since this industry titan left us. As we get close to the anniversary of his death, we pay tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman this episode of We Remember.
Hoffman was brilliant in so many movies that it was hard to do justice to the scope of his career in a fifteen-minute video. Still, writer-editor-narrator Taylor James Johnson, who you may know for his WTF Happened to this Celebrity series, did a great job. Speaking as a fan of Hoffman’s, I almost forgot that Twister put him on the map, as I always assumed it was Boogie Nights, but nope – it was Twister, and he was legitimately great in it. Here, we dig into some of his best roles, including Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, Almost Famous, Mission: Impossible III (the best villain in the franchise’s history), Capote, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, and some of his lesser-known passion projects like Love Liza. While the circumstances surrounding his death were tragic, we don’t dwell on it here, opting to celebrate his fantastic body of work in our Philip Seymour Hoffman tribute.
If you like this video, make sure to check out other episodes of We Remember below. And make sure to tell us in the comments what your favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman movie is.