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An Appreciation: Philip Seymour Hoffman, dazzling talent tinged with sadness

\Found dead on Sunday from an apparent drug overdose in a Greenwich Village apartment, Hoffman was 46. Last month he was front and center at the Sundance Film Festival, premiering a pair of pictures - God's Pocket, based on the Pete Dexter novel, and A Most Wanted Man, an adaptation of the John le Carré spy thriller.

File-In this file photo provided by Sony Pictures Classics, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Tuman Capote, a one-of-a-kind author sent to Kansas to pen an article about the brutal murder of a family in a small Kansas town that sent shockwaves through the nation in "Capote." In a medium (movies) that prizes glamour and flash, he offered the opposite: untidy, imperfect, shy, awkward and eminently real people. Despite his outsized talent, he was relentlessly humble. Bennett Miller, his longtime friend and “Capote� director, once called him “a shaman-like actor.� (AP Photo/Sony Pictures Classics, Attila Dory, File)
File-In this file photo provided by Sony Pictures Classics, Philip Seymour Hoffman as Tuman Capote, a one-of-a-kind author sent to Kansas to pen an article about the brutal murder of a family in a small Kansas town that sent shockwaves through the nation in "Capote." In a medium (movies) that prizes glamour and flash, he offered the opposite: untidy, imperfect, shy, awkward and eminently real people. Despite his outsized talent, he was relentlessly humble. Bennett Miller, his longtime friend and “Capote� director, once called him “a shaman-like actor.� (AP Photo/Sony Pictures Classics, Attila Dory, File)Read more
    by Steven Rea, Inquirer Movie Critic | Columnist
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