He's far from a Hollywood pretty boy, but the Fairport alum is a hot young star and about to get hotter
Story by JACK GARNER, STAFF FILM CRITIC

Philip Seymour Hoffman doesn't look or act like a star. The Perinton native would be the first to insist that he isn't, in fact, a star. But 15 years after he gave up high school baseball and wrestling for school plays, and seven years after he appeared in Scent of a Woman, very big things are happening for the rumpled, strawberry-blond, 31-year-old actor.

Before this year is out, Hoffman will be a household name. Consider these typical signs of stardom:

• A famous director insists you're the only actor he wants for a key role in an important movie. (Joel Schumacher set his forthcoming Flawless to match Hoffman's busy schedule. He had to have him.)

• The greatest actor of his generation is thrilled to work with you and praises you to his friends. (Robert De Niro, who co-stars with Hoffman in Flawless, told friend Robin Williams, "He's really good.")

• Big studios position the release of your movie late in the year, hoping to grab media attention and major awards such as, dare we say it, Oscars. (Flawless is set by MGM for a Christmastime release. Hoffman's other two films of 1999 also are scheduled for December.)

• Hot young independent filmmakers clamor to get you into their stable of actors. (His directors Todd Solondz of Happiness, the Coen brothers of The Big Lebowski, Paul Thomas Anderson of Boogie Nights and the forthcoming Magnolia all feel proprietary about Hoffman.)

• Noted celebrity photographer Herb Ritz takes your picture for a forthcoming issue of Vogue magazine. (Ritz just shot Hoffman and De Niro for a special Flawless photo spread.)

• You're the object of a fan Web site. (In Darcy's Philip Seymour Hoffman page at http://lavender.fortunecity.com/brasco/65/psh/, its creator writes of Hoffman: "I will defy his wish that people not so much notice him as an actor, but notice the characters he plays and I will take it all a step further and say that yes, this man is cute.")

Indeed, Hoffman's looks often come up for discussion, simply because he's not a Hollywood pretty boy. In a culture dominated by the Leos and Brads and Matts, the superficial might view that as a minus. But the perceptive see it as a plus.

He has "a remarkable face," wrote Interview magazine in its February issue. "One look at it and you know that, contrary to rumor, movies haven't lost their genius for discovering actors who are capable of being themselves while occupying the spirit of another person and mirroring the secrets and desires of everyone watching in the dark."

Hoffman's mother, Rochester lawyer Marilyn Hoffman Connor, proudly puts it another way.

After watching her son's performance of the painful loner in last year's Happiness, she told him, "You know, Philip, you give a voice to the voiceless.Õ"

Hoffman has built his reputation, in part, by embracing difficult roles that a vainer actor might reject.

From the pathetic Scotty J. in Boogie Nights to the masturbating loser in Happiness, Hoffman has brought insight and humanity to people we might otherwise avoid.

"People who have these really difficult feelings and moments never get themselves seen," Connor says. "You don't understand their inner torment.

"Philip makes you feel a person not just see their actions."

Such roles are "the ones people notice because the emotions are really laid bare," Hoffman told me last fall, when he was plugging Happiness at the Toronto Film Festival. "I think people really appreciate that."

And to make such characters live and breathe, Hoffman must take risks, opening himself to raw, painful emotions.

"I know that the leap of faith is my job. Directors have a lot of control, but I know that at the end of the day, it's my job to make it work, to make people believe me."

But, Hoffman quickly points out, he likes to play all sorts of characters, not just life's losers.

He was the snotty prep school student in Scent of a Woman, an officious small-town cop in Nobody's Fool, an eccentric tornado chaser in Twister, a millionaire's assistant in The Big Lebowski, a bright but tightly strung medical student in Patch Adams.

Odds are, those roles may be only a preamble to Flawless. A big studio film from Schumacher (of the Batman films, A Time to Kill and 8 Millimeter), it promises to be a major hit.

Schumacher says it explores the theme of "what it means to be a man."

De Niro plays a retired, ultra-conservative security guard in Manhattan who suffers a debilitating stroke. As part of his rehabilitation, he's required to take singing lessons.

His teacher? A next-door neighbor who happens to be a drag queen. And he/she is played by Hoffman.

Hoffman objects to the label. "He's a guy who thinks he's a woman. He wants a sex-change operation. It's much more serious than a drag queen. This is a guy whose identity is in a major crisis.

"There was a lot of work to be done psychologically and in terms of behavior.

"I wasn't just playing an effeminate man. He's a guy who lives as a woman all day long. Playing him was very challenging and very satisfying."

Hoffman says working with the legendary De Niro "was everything I would have hoped it would be, and a lot more. He really believed in me and he respected me, and made me feel that way."

His director also was a believer.

"Along with George Eastman, Rochester can claim Philip as a true genius," Schumacher says.

"Philip is just brilliant. He and De Niro are fantastic together. I could die and go to heaven."

Schumacher is well-known for discovering talent or elevating it to a higher level. Julia Roberts, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland were among the young stars spotlighted in such early Schumacher films as St. Elmo's Fire, The Lost Boys and Flatliners.

"Phil can do anything," the director says. "Just look at the range he's played in a very short period of time. His research and attention to detail are amazing.

"Philip could do Richard III one day and Hellzapoppin' the next day. He could go from A Balm in Gilead to a cops-and-robbers show on TV.

"I feel about Philip the way I do about Kevin Spacey they're truly great character actors. The bad news is they may not earn $25 million a movie, but they'll work forever.

"It's great to see that people are starting to notice him."

When Hoffman was a sophomore at Fairport High School in 1982, he would have preferred recognition for the way he played shortstop or for his abilities as a wrestler.

But when he suffered a neck injury during a wrestling match, his career as an athlete was over.

"I started doing plays my sophomore year. I had a crush on some girl. It was that kind of thing."

Hoffman's English teacher and drama coach was Midge Marshall.

"I remember he played Radar in our version of M*A*S*H," says Marshall, who still teaches at Fairport.

"He was very good, except he stole the scene he was in. I told him it was Hot Lips' scene, and not his. I told him he couldn't have a lead until he was ready to let people have their scenes."

"Then we did The Crucible, and he did the jailer at the end. And he decided the jailer was drunk and sad, and it was quite a good scene."

After a few more good moments in other plays, Marshall entrusted Hoffman with the lead role in his senior class play, Death of a Salesman.

Even then, Hoffman sensed that no high school kid should be attempting something as complex and mature as Willy Loman, but he eventually agreed to try.

"I watched the auditorium, filled with 600 people," Marshall remembers. "What on earth was happening here? He was absolutely Willy Loman. When the curtain call came they applauded politely for each actor, and then Phil walked out, and the entire auditorium stood up en masse.Õ"

Hoffman's mother also cites that night as a revelation.

"I realized he was really special. I walked out at intermission of Death of a Salesman and I looked at Midge and she looked at me, and she said, 'You didn't know, did you?' No, I didn't. I was his mother, and I liked everything all my kids did. But oh, my God."

Hoffman laughs with some embarrassment when he thinks of that performance.

"It was one of those cases of people doing something way beyond them," he recalls.

"But I think what people were sensing was that I had the will and enthusiasm to try to do whatever I could pull off. That's what an actor needs. Actors have no other choice but to do it."

Barbara Biddy, founder of Rochester's Shipping Dock Theatre, noticed that special spark and cast the high school senior in his first paying part, a role in her production of A Breeze from the Gulf.

"The important thing about Phil, he's very bright and very grounded, and certainly creative," Biddy says. "He was able to take emotional risks, even at that age.

"His choices have been fabulous; he hasn't jumped at anything," she adds. "It doesn't surprise me that he's doing so well."

Inspired by his high school success, Hoffman attended a summer theater program in New York City. After graduating from Fairport in 1985, he enrolled at New York University.

There, he says, he learned another important lesson: Don't pursue stardom; let people discover you.

How, then, does an actor get a foothold in the business?

"It's not by going into 'the business,' " Hoffman says. "The business can't be a thought. You get a foothold because you want to get a foothold as an artist. Your desire, your intensity, has to be about being a great actor or a great painter or a great musician.

"If that's strong enough, it'll lead you to good teachers and to places where you'll learn.

"For me, the business wasn't a thought. I was doing a play, and a friend in the play said, 'My manager is here tonight and she wants to meet you.' And I said, 'Oh.' And that's how I got a manager."

When we spoke in Toronto, Hoffman was in the midst of a lot of work.

Besides his lead role in Flawless, he was playing a supporting part as a wealthy young "ugly American," circa 1950, on a party romp through Europe in The Talented Mr. Ripley, with Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow. Then he was to move directly into Magnolia, with writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson.

"It's with Jason Robards, Tom Cruise and Julianne Moore, and it's a very, very, very special project," Hoffman said months later, when I called him at his downtown Manhattan apartment.

"It's quite a piece. But I'm not allowed to talk about that, or Anderson will hunt me down in the streets."

Hoffman says he enjoyed working with Cruise, who seemed to relish the chance to be part of an acting ensemble.

"Tom is a really nice guy and has a lot on the ball," Hoffman says. "You meet him and you kind of want to get healthy. I felt, I gotta get in shape."

Now, with Flawless, Ripley and Magnolia behind him, Hoffman says he's taking a break. He says that's the best thing about success.

"It's weird. My life has changed, when I go out in the world. People know who I am, which is different. But working as an actor, it's the same.

"Career-wise, I get offered more things. . . . I don't audition as much.

"Right now I'm not working, and I don't plan to for a few months.

"That's a good feeling to be able to wait on something that'll really be good."

Back in Rochester, Hoffman's mother has been adjusting, too.

"I had a panic attack about a month ago, because it hit me that he was going to another level," she says.

"I called his apartment and left a message. 'Philip, are you all right? This is going to get too big. I'm really frightened.' I was really a mess."

"He called back and left this message: 'Mom, I'm all right. The only thing that's going to change is that I'm going to be recognized more, and I'm going to get more opportunities to work.' "

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Thanks much to John Moriello, Web producer for the transcription of this article and to the two wonderful people responsible for emailing it to me as well as the the accompanying picture.