It's 7 am on an autumn day, and he's exhausted from spending hours the night before in the airport waiting to get out of The City. Weary but genial, Hoffman, in his standard trendy garb - green khaki jacket and pants, black shoes and black, chunky glasses - is ready for a day on the town in Rochester. Home for a screening of his new film Flawless, in which he plays a transsexual named Rusty opposite Robert DeNiro, Hoffman cheerfully agrees to promote the show, a benefit for a favorite local cause, Shipping Dock Theater, as well as the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York, of which he is a codirector.
I anxiously volunteer to drive him to the publicity stints so I can capture some of his brief but precious time home in Rochester. When I show up at his mother's home in Penfield, Marilyn Hoffman O'Connor greets me and tells me the news in already out that her son is home. One station called her at 5 am trying to get her son on air before 7, she exclaims, after patting down her son's dark blond hair.
It's not a far drive from his mother's house into Rochester. But it's a fun on.
"You've got Hole?" Hoffman proclaims, checking out the CD collection stashed in my car. Impressed, he opted instead for If I Were A Carpenter. I knew Hoffman and I had clicked. So, we blasted the stereo and cruised downtown to CBS radio. Suddenly, I realize Hoffman and I would get our first magazine covers together.
"I never expected anyone to see me in this light," Hoffman said. "I just keep trying to work hard and act well."
Before he came home, Hoffman had just wrapped up filming his first romantic lead in David Mamet's State and Main on location in Massachusetts and was anxiously awaiting spending tie working alongside his pal John C. Reilly in the Broadway revival of Sam Shepard's True West. (The contemporaries are alums of Paul Thomas Anderson films Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Hard Eight.)
As if filming his first two lead roles weren't enough, Hoffman also made two other movies in the months before his trip back home - The Talented Mr. Ripley in Italy and Magnolia. On top of that, he recently directed In Arabia We'd All Be Kings at LAByrinth and was traveling to Europe with director Joel Schumacher to promote Flawless.
Not bad for a 32-year-old guy from Fairport who used to sabotage his sister's neighborhood plays and play golf in Martha Brown Middle School's field to pass his childhood days.
"I didn't think I'd ever work with anybody," Hoffman admits. "I didn't know if I'd get out of here."
Hoffman - who has now lived in Manhattan for half of his life and is a graduate of New York University's drama program - remembers spending time in our city with his mother, especially to attend local theater. "Rochester's a groovy city," he enthuses on his way to the station. "The city's what makes this place great."
One of those local theater troupes was Shipping Dock, and in 1984, while still a student at Fairport High School, the troupe gave Hoffman his first professional acting break in A Breeze in the Gulf. His mother serves on the theater's board, so Hoffman - relieved it's not yet another week of press junkers - he is looking forward to the rare chance to help out back home.
First up was an appearance on the WPXY morning show.
"I have to call you star, man," Scott Spezzano tells Hoffman, as they broadcast live. "You've passed that point. You've shot to the moon."
"He may be a Hollywood star, but he still says, 'Raaachester,'" chimes in on-air personality Steve Hausmann.
"Raaachester," Hoffman replies, hamming it up.
After the radio spots, I drop Hoffman back home so he can go work out at the Penfield YMCA and shop for shoes at Payless. I return just a couple of hours later, though, for round two. This time, it's a photo shoot for Rochester Magazine. Bill Coppard of the little Theater, who has agreed to let us shoot on location there, heads down from his office to hand- deliver a letter for Hoffman that just arrived that day.
Curious, Hoffman opens it and reads parts of it aloud.
"I'm single, no kids and a little intimidated by the thought of marriage," wrote the woman. But Hoffman, a gentleman, would only reveal she was from Rochester and works as a scientist in the south. He continues: "But I'm 30 and you seem like a pretty nice guy."
Hoffman occasionally receives letters like this. This woman, he can relate to.
"Who hasn't felt like that?" Hoffman asks. "I've seen women in movies and wished I could ask them out."
Before we know it, hours have passed and Hoffman still has to do a public service announcement for Shipping Dock and a handful of TV news interviews.
On our way back to his mother's house, Hoffman admits a vice.
"The doughnuts at Wegmans are pretty awesome," he says. Two weeks earlier, he kicked his decade-long pack-and-a-half a day cigarette habit, so he succumbs to the guilty pleasure of sugar. A quick stop into East Avenue Wegmans for some of his favorite - cream-filled with chocolate on top - seemed in order.
Hoffman can't escape without being noticed. A woman in the checkout line ahead of us spots Hoffman and does a double take.
"Are you who I think you are?" she asks.
"Yes I am," Hoffman replied, almost embarrassed.
"Thank you," the Brighton woman tells Hoffman, adding she appreciates his choice of roles and the example he sets for her teen-aged sons.
The media has fallen in love with Hoffman for taking on roles as "freaks and geeks," as W magazine put it. (The magazine also said, "If you don't already know who Philip Seymour Hoffman is, it's just a matter of time.")
In Boogie Nights, his Scotty J. character falls in love with Dirk Diggler and awkwardly kisses the startled porn star. In Twister, he's a nerd who chases tornadoes, while in Happiness he brings compassion into his role as an obscene phone caller.
But Hoffman says he doesn't like being referred to as a character actor. "Everybody's odd," he says. "I try to create real people." Rather, he asserts he observes unusual things about ordinary people and integrates those characteristics into his roles. Outside Wegmans, he points to a woman who appears angry and talks to herself, a man with huge tape on his ear and another man trying to ride a bicycle while carrying a grocery bag. These people are the folks other people can relate to, he says.
After the sugar rush, Hoffman had just enough time to go home to freshen up, catch himself on the local news and have dinner at 2 Vine with his father, Gordon Hoffman, and his two sisters, Jill DelVecchio, of Penfield, and Emily Barr, of Syracuse.
After dinner, he rounded the corner and saw the Little Theater's marquee, emblazoned with his name. He burst into laughter.
"Oh, my gosh, that's way too big," he says.
Waiting for him to arrive were the media, old friends, and Rochesterians proud of Hoffman's achievements. It was far different from the glitter and glamour of Hollywood and New York.
"This is more interesting and special," Hoffman states, as he surveyed the crowd. "It's all good."
"You grow up watching the news. You're not supposed to be on the news."
As the TV reporters ask him about his portrayal as a transsexual, Hoffman's supporters gather around.
"It's flawless , I heard," said Shipping Dock head Barbara Biddy, watching the actor she gave a break to be interviewed.
"A lot of people say 'This is the start of the big time,' " Sherman Burdette of Fox News comments.
"My brother's pissed off," Hoffman laughed, adding his brother, Gordon, is a very talented playwright. (In fact, Gordon has received funding for his first movie, Love, Liza, in which Philip will star as a man who takes up sniffing glue to deaden his pain after his wife commits suicide.)
All his hard work promoting the event had paid off. Inside, the Little was brimming with about 300 guests - old friend, teachers and other folk who wanted to show Hoffman how much they support him. After the movie, Hoffman had his true homecoming as he mingled with the crowd and was reunited with people he hadn't seen in years.
"You don't forget a kid like that," says Janice Collins, Hoffman's third-grade teacher.
Hoffman grew up on Kings Lacy Way. His parents divorced while he was in high school. He has remained close with his family and stays with his mother when he's in town.
He is one of four siblings, three of whom have acted.
"I used to do all the neighborhood plays, and he would sabotage them," recalled his sister, Emily, who is a year younger than Philip and a midwife.
More interested in sports than acting as a youngster, Hoffman would go on to play football and wrestle for Fairport High. But after repeated injuries left him sidelined, he decided to act in plays instead of sabotaging them.
When Barr would watch her brother perform the lead in Fairport High School's Death of a Salesman, she knew he was destined for a life as an actor.
"Whether or not he became famous, you knew he was going to do theater," she said. "He said he'd rather be an actor who's always working and doing a great job than be an actor who's in all the magazines."
Now, Hoffman is not only busy - he's also been on several talk shows, profiled in virtually every top magazine and won several awards.
He received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Leading Actor. He also won the Golden Satellite Award (an off-shoot of the SAG) and was named 1999's Best Supporting Actor by the National Board of Review for his portrayal of a compassionate nurse in Magnolia and a brash ex-patriot in The Talented Mr. Ripley.
Rosie O'Donnell has had him on her show twice and called him "one of the best actors working." Diane Sawyer gushed over him on Good Morning America. Talk magazine raved he "is a new sort of Hollywood handsome: real." Premiere magazine named him one of the top 100 actors of the past century, praising him for not being afraid to take certain roles. And two days before his homecoming last fall, The New York Times called Hoffman "a candidate to become the last hot actor of the 20th century."
Hoffman has never been afraid to take a challenge. One of his first roles was playing Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
Hoffman O'Connor recalls the night her 17-year-old son put on horn-rimmed glasses and transformed into a 57-year-old man facing death.
"I guess it's a philosophy I have, that you should do what you want," says Hoffman O'Connor. 'I think my kids know that."
Before the play, Hoffman O'Connor decided to ask her son what exactly he wanted out of the experience. She'll never forget his response. It was such a simple dream. "I want a standing ovation because I want them to know how hard I worked."
Well, he received one that night. And 15 years later, he's receiving standing ovations on Broadway.
Now the buzz is he may win a Tony this year for his performance in True West.
Although it's Hoffman's first Broadway role, he and Reilly have their names above the title.
Hoffman, who has appeared in several off-Broadway productions, is used to the rigors of the stage. But True West undoubtedly has been his most exhausting stage role. Not only do he and Reilly switch roles every three nights (an idea by the play's director Matthew Warchus), but their roles are very physical, too. The actors play estranged brothers who sort out their sibling rivalries and end up reversing each other's values system. While they do it, they wreak havoc on the stage.
In late February, on the last performance during the first week of (mostly sold-out) previews, an injury finally occurred.
It had been a long day for Hoffman. It was his turn to play Austin, the writer who makes toast with 16 stolen toasters, while it was Reilly's day to play Lee, the burglar who smashes Austin's typewriter with a nine iron. In the process of all the chaos on the stage, Reilly sent Hoffman flying into the typewriter, causing a gash to his left elbow. But like any consummate actor, Hoffman took his standing ovation, choosing to ignore the blood running from his elbow.
After washing up and greeting friends and visitors backstage, Hoffman emerged into the theater lobby to be greeted by several fans, some clutching Time Out New York, on which Hoffman and Reilly shared the cover that week.
"I love you," one teen-age girl told Hoffman, as he signed his name for her. 'Wow, thanks so much. Can I give you a hug?"
"Sure," Hoffman said reluctantly, not out of fear, but apparent surprise.
As Hoffman gave her a hug, the girl's parents and other fans snapped pictures of the moment. Meanwhile, Hoffman's out-of-town friends patiently waited for him so they could go grab a bite to eat.
"I feel like I'm healed," the girl beamed.
After Hoffman was done with the impromptu autograph session, he put on a hunting hat and disappeared into the streets of New York.
** Note from Daryn -- your local webmonkey just wants you know that he sat and transcribed this whole article straight from the magazine so any mistakes should be reported [though I did run it through the spell-check. *grin*]. Thanks for your understanding and thank you thank you thank YOU to Emily for providing me with the magazine. You are the most amazing person on earth and I stand in awe of you. Toodle-pip.