{"id":1572,"date":"2014-02-07T11:23:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/?p=1572"},"modified":"2014-02-08T10:02:07","modified_gmt":"2014-02-08T18:02:07","slug":"philip-seymour-hoffman-a-brilliant-but-tortured-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2014\/film-2\/philip-seymour-hoffman-a-brilliant-but-tortured-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Philip Seymour Hoffman – A Brilliant but Tortured Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Philip<\/a>

from imdb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

I was relaxing in a hotel room in Miami a few mornings ago, when my husband, Rob, looked up from his newspaper to say, \u201cYou won\u2019t believe who just died. One of the great actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hearing Philip Seymour Hoffman had overdosed on heroin<\/a> <\/strong>was a shock even though we knew he\u2019d had problems with drugs from the past. We\u2019d looked up his biography<\/a><\/strong> online, because we were so enamored with his work on film and stage, and had seen most of his films.<\/p>\n

To us, he was more than a star. He was everyman, and those were the kinds of roles he picked, those were the kind that made him so memorable. He didn\u2019t shy away from the truth in his work. When I saw him play Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman<\/a><\/strong> in 2012 on Broadway, I not only left the theatre sobbing, but the play and its tragedy stayed with me for awhile afterwards as I walked to Times Square and met up with my husband who was waiting for me there on the second floor of MacDonald’s. I fell into his arms crying. That was how much Philip Seymour Hoffman\u2019s performance had affected me.<\/p>\n

That final scene between father and son, played by Andrew Garfield, was that powerful, even though I\u2019d seen the play twice before and I was watching two famous actors flex their acting muscles. In that final confrontation, I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman put everything into it. Perhaps his father\u2019s background as a salesman had informed his performance, but whatever it was that propelled him to show us his character\u2019s heart and vulnerability, it came from a deep well of emotion. One that perhaps eventually took him from us.<\/p>\n

\"Love<\/a>

from imdb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

In\u00a0 fact, I had written about his wonderful work in my blog before, about his film Love Liza. Strangely, the title I had chosen for that post was The Curious Appeal of Tragedy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His death and legacy reminded me of Heath Ledger<\/a> and how he\u2019d also died of an overdose, in his case, an accidental one of prescription drugs for pneumonia and insomnia. I recall crying while watching his final scene of Brokeback Mountain, <\/a>in which he brilliantly portrayed a man in love, a man whose heart was broken. Heath Ledger was another actor who was generous with his feelings. His sensitivity, like Hoffman\u2019s, was probably hard to manage. Like in Hoffman\u2019s death, drugs won, we lost.<\/p>\n

Since we heard the news, questions have arisen about celebrity and fame. Celebrity is not all what it appears to be. Fame does not feed the soul.<\/p>\n

And as a wonderful article through Flavorwire by Michelle Dean<\/a> points out, we think we know the famous from what we read in the tabloids and what we observe on the screen or\u00a0\u00a0 as in this writer\u2019s case, what she observed on the street. But the famous are just humans like us, struggling with life\u2019s challenges. The major difference is they have little place to hide.<\/p>\n

On Broadway, on Feb. 5th<\/sup>, at 7:45 pm, the lights were dimmed<\/a> for a minute in honor of Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was a brilliant but tortured artist. He\u2019s left behind a prodigious body of work, but also a grieving family and fans. May he rest in peace.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was relaxing in a hotel room in Miami a few mornings ago, when my husband, Rob, looked up from his newspaper to say, \u201cYou won\u2019t believe who just died.… <\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[82,87],"tags":[585,314,587,313,78,583,586,584,299,588,298],"class_list":["post-1572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-2","category-theatre-2","tag-actor","tag-broadway","tag-brokeback-mountain","tag-death-of-a-salesman","tag-diana-stevan","tag-flavorwire","tag-heath-ledger","tag-heroin","tag-love-liza","tag-michelle-dean","tag-philip-seymour-hoffman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LuVB-pm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":895,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2012\/film-2\/the-curious-appeal-of-tragedy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1572,"position":0},"title":"The Curious Appeal of Tragedy","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"23 \u0411\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0437\u043d\u044f, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"After watching the film, Love Liza with the incredibly talented Philip Seymour Hoffman, I wondered what it was about this story that kept me engaged. It was depressing.\u00a0 And yet, the film won the Waldo Salt screenwriting award at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002. It\u2019s about a man who\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/film-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Love-Liza-166x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":929,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2012\/writing\/rebirth-of-a-masterpiece-death-of-a-salesman\/","url_meta":{"origin":1572,"position":1},"title":"Rebirth of a Masterpiece – Death of a Salesman","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"16 \u041a\u0432\u0456\u0442\u043d\u044f, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Every once in awhile, a piece of writing sets itself apart from the others in its brilliance. The play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, written in 1949, is that piece of writing. It\u2019s one that still touches the hearts of its audience and leaves it stunned at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0423 "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.dianastevan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/200px-DeathOfASalesman.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1748,"url":"https:\/\/www.dianastevan.com\/uk\/2014\/writing\/looking-for-love-in-a-mad-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":1572,"position":2},"title":"Looking for Love in a Mad World","author":"Diana Stevan","date":"21 \u041b\u0438\u043f\u043d\u044f, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I\u2019ve been so troubled by what\u2019s going on in Gaza and the Ukraine, that I\u2019ve been glued to the news on TV and my Twitter timeline. I\u2019ve been neglecting my writing, which I love to do. It\u2019s hard to fathom why people want to kill someone else. 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