See also: Philip Seymour Hoffman Looks Back at The Big Lebowski

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmA-WSNhmRQ[/youtube]

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‘Magnolia’ (1999)

Like Boogie Nights, Magnolia puts Hoffman together again with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson, this time playing a nurse to a cancer-ridden tycoon (Jason Robards). Just to watch Hoffman’s face as the old man spills out his death-bed confession is a lesson in acting.

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k0-pSCwcx4[/youtube]

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‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ (1999)

Playing Freddie Miles, an expat creep who calls bullshit on Matt Damon’s imposter, Hoffman damn near steals the film through the sheer force of Freddie’s obnoxiousness.
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CfVgcSltjc[/youtube]

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‘State and Main’ (2000)
As a fledgling screenwriter in David Mamet’s Hollywood satire, Hoffman comes as close as he ever has to playing a romantic comedy, sparring with Rebecca Pidgeon and showing the wounds inflicted on a writer who thinks the truth matters.

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4XKh2E9Ybw[/youtube]

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‘Along Came Polly’ (2004)
For those who think of Hoffman only as a serious actor who could never cut loose in a farce, check him out in this Ben Stiller throwaway in which he acts the role of a former child star given to “sharting.” Don’t ask. Let Hoffman tell you.

[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJckGOSkTG0[/youtube]

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‘Capote’ (2005)
Hoffman won his first and only Oscar for playing the gadfly author turned In Cold Blood crime writer Truman Capote. The role is a complete transformation in voice, body and tone. The scene in which Capote reads an advance chapter of In Cold Blood for a New York literary crowd is pure acting alchemy.
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_c-vPB1nxc[/youtube]

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‘Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead’ (2007)

In the last film directed by the late, great Sidney Lumet, Hoffman – who opens the film in a nude tangle with Marisa Tomei – plays a scumbag who’ll rob and even murder his own parents to maintain a covert lifestyle. His every moment is chilling, but the scene in the heroin den may be too much to take for right now.
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jhrxn7QVDc[/youtube]

 

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‘The Savages’ (2007)
As one half of dysfunctional brother and sister (Laura Linney) drama geeks, Hoffman is richly details one of his most complex characters. Whether hanging from a neck brace or crying in his eggs, he leaves you in awe.
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skGbUq_ZyGU[/youtube]

‘Charlie Wilson’s War’ (2007)
Hoffman received an Oscar nomination for playing rogue CIA op Gust Avrakotos and when he’s brokering the sale of Soviet weapons through Israel and Islamic Pakistan he’s the film’s sparking livewire.
[youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ_4m2ocxhI[/youtube]

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‘Doubt’ (2008)
As a priest who may or may not have molested a boy under his care, Hoffman gives John Patrick Shanley’s provocation of a film an aura of haunted conviction, notably when a nun, played by Meryl Streep, tries to get him on the ropes.