Interview: The talented Mr Hoffman

The first time I met Philip Seymour Hoffman was at the Public Theatre in New York. It was at a read-through of the play The Last Days of Judas Iscariat, being produced by the LABrinth Theatre Company, of which Hoffman is the co-artistic director.

I'll always remember the occasion because it has become part of my dinner table repertoire. A friend visiting me at the time came along and after the reading struck up a conversation with Hoffman. Wandering over, I then heard my friend ask "What do you do?" Hoffman replied, "I'm an actor." To which my friend responded, "Cool, how's it working out? Have you had any luck?" Hoffman didn't bat an eyelid and meekly said, "I'm in a film, Cold Mountain, that has just come out."

It seemed incredible at the time that anyone could not know who Hoffman was. He'd already established himself as one of the most exciting actors of his generation. His breakthrough came in his role as Scotty the lovesick camera assistant in Boogie Nights. Then he was making obscene phone calls in Happiness and being Freddie Miles, the obnoxious acquaintance of Jude Law in The Talented Mr Ripley. Throw in playing a drag artist who steals scenes from Robert De Niro in Flawless and Hoffman had become the guy to call when you needed an actor to play a character residing on the periphery of life. When he aired his interest in playing a teacher with a crush on a student in 25th Hour, Spike Lee stopped auditioning for the role and stated, "If Philip Seymour Hoffman says he wants to do a part, you're not going to turn him down."

The remarkable rise of Hoffman was affirmed by his peers when he won the Oscar for his turn as the eponymous scribe in Capote - a role for which he went on a diet to look the part - and five minutes after the Academy Award envelope was opened I was on the phone to my friend reminding him of his faux pas.

Since that first meeting I've met the 39-year-old actor on several occasions - a couple of times at other LABrynth theatre functions and also conducting interviews with him. I've always been struck by the way that Hoffman answers questions; he stares into space and has an air of intense concentration. Unus-ually for an actor, he doesn't seem to enjoy the spotlight. Since his Oscar win, Hoffman has been conspicuous by his absence. Mission: Impossible III, released soon after his Academy Award, had long been finished.

Winning an Oscar is something of a poisoned chalice, however. One only has to look at the downhill slalom of Halle Berry to see how it can all go wrong. All of a sudden offers are flying through the door and everyone is waiting to see what you're going to do next. On the fallout from the Oscar, Hoffman tells me at our latest meeting: "Everyone wants you to feel a certain way about that. It's important that you be grateful for what you've been given. But it's pretty hard to be [grateful] when everyone is telling you that you should want more. You have to be careful what you wish for."

One of the ways that Hoffman keeps grounded is by performing on stage. He has just finished appearing in the sell-out run of a new play Jack Goes Boating at the Public Theatre. Hoffman played limo driver Jack, an unlikely romantic lead in this comedy about two couples at different stages of their romances. It was the first time that Hoffman had appeared on stage with his co-artistic director at the LABrynth, John Ortiz, and the light-hearted tone was unusual for a company that made its name with New York-set dramas.In doing a screwball comedy, it was as if Hoffman had decided to have a public celebration of his Oscar success and the establishment of the Lab as a major theatrical force.

His love for the stage can be attributed to his mother, a family court judge. "I grew up in western New York state, which might as well have been the Midwest. Where I grew up there were not many different backgrounds or religions; it was just a certain race and class of people all settling in a middle-class area. [My mother] was a big theatre person and we would go to the theatre together."

It was in New York that Hoffman began to feel comfortable and see an opportunity to fulfil his dream to become an actor. "When I eventually did come to New York as a teenager, it was kind of like, this is the world and I need to go to this world. Now I realise that New York is basically its own country, you go there to live in the country of New York. That is why I'm here and why I'm at the LABrynth. I get to experience and integrate myself into all different types of people, all different types of minds and all different types of backgrounds and ultimately I feel challenged by that. I get to be a part of it. I'm going to approach cultures that I feel inadequate in or afraid of."

He isn't interested in playing the ordinary Joe. He elucidates, "I think human nature is surprising. People in general are surprising: they're pretty weird, odd and eccentric. I don't think that there is anybody who doesn't have those qualities in some way or another. I think that if you're doing your job as an actor you try to capture that. A lot of people say to me, 'You play people weird' and I reply, 'That's people.' As much as you can dictate how people will behave, that is when they surprise you. The minute you think 'I've got that person nailed', they'll go and do something else."

Hoffman has also directed three plays written by Stephen Adly Guirgis for the company. It was in 1999 while working on his first directorial effort In Arabia We'd All be Kings that he started dating the mother of his children, the costume designer Mimi O'Donnell. His biggest success as a director came with Jesus Hopped the A-Train which, following its award winning off-Broadway stint, played at the Edinburgh Festival before a sell-out run at the Donmar Warehouse. The mixed reception to Our Lady of 121st Street in 2003 and the increasing demands on Hoffman as an actor has led to him taking a sabbatical from the director's chair.

He's self-effacing about his own talent. He states, "I'm not a great mimic. When I act I hope that my acting is not predicted. You hopefully don't know what is going to happen next. I don't look for performance value but for truth, and hopefully that is a mess, a little raw. Just like people are and your partners are. It's like looking at a Matisse. Sometimes you think it is not very well done and then you realise he wasn't able to do some of those paintings if he wasn't as talented and masterful as he was. The Piano Lesson is one of my favourite paintings, but it is not Norman Rockwell. It is not perfect."

Hoffman argues that the intensity of film acting means that he has to be careful in the roles that he takes. "Part of acting in a film is about pacing yourself. It is a marathon with small sprints during the day that is part of a long race. You really are gauging how much energy to use over a period of time so that you conserve energy as the day can be 14 hours long. You must decide when to really go for it and when to pace yourself."

Hoffman is to appear in two of the most eagerly anticipated films due to hit our screens later this year. In Mike Nichol's Charlie Wilson's War, he plays a CIA operative who conspired with Congressman Charlie Wilson to help the Mujahideen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It has one of the finest casts put together in years, with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts sharing top billing.

And Hoffman seems born to play his role in Synecdoche, New York, the directing debut of the Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. In the film, which has just started shooting in New York, Hoffman plays a theatre director who believes that he is dying, and as a result suffers an existential crisis. Place your bets on Hoffman picking up another gold statute soon.