(Originally a journal entry)
Philip Seymour Hoffman is dead. Dead. I am so greatly affected by this. My thought process is trying to make sense of it. How can a man, an actor whom I've never met, make me feel this way? My initial thought is, I am never going to see him in a movie ever again. I think about all his great roles, truly spellbinding stuff, and try to think of anyone better. Much is said about acting and immersion in character, but he was in a different time space continuum than the rest. He had variety and intensity, he sucked me in and never let go. I remember the scene towards the end of Capote where he visited the two murderers just before their execution. He held nothing back and when his tears flowed I knew they were real, that he was real. Sublime perfection. He was the purest, truest form of artist, one that let you behind the wall, exposing an enthralling rawness.
Then I think of how he died. That is the saddest of all. Found on his bathroom floor in a T-shirt and shorts with a needle sticking out of his arm, heroin overdose. He was alone and consumed by addiction and I know, oh how I know, the loneliness of addiction. He had been sober for twenty years and relapsed. It makes me sad and scared. Will I relapse? No I won't, but it is a stirring reminder that not everyone stays on the path of sobriety. He could have lived for many more years had the darkness not taken him over. Instead, three children are without a doting father. I am sorry for them and so very sorry for him. Sorry that no one was there for him at the end of his life, a life that was snuffed out by chemical dependence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdBxXQmvc0s