Phillip Seymour Hoffmann found dead

Holy shit, he looked absolutely terrible for 46.

coach d wrote:

Another drug addict bites the dust.

BFD

I would not consider a guy who dies at 46 with a syringe in his arm as someone to be admired.

No one is defending him or saying he should be admired... just that they are saddened by his death. If you had an alcoholic father or brother that drank themselves to death would you not be sad at the loss - and the wasted potential.

A great athlete or artist can touch people with their performances even if they are poor role models, and flawed human beings. Showing a little compassion is an admirable quality.

coach d wrote:

Another drug addict bites the dust.

BFD

I would not consider a guy who dies at 46 with a syringe in his arm as someone to be admired.

How about someone who dies at 46 with a bunch of catheters up their whatever and burn marks on their chest where the emergency doctor tried to restart their heart? Or someone who dies at 46 with no hair on their body from all the chemo?

The bulk of the mental health medical community acknowledge addiction as an illness. Your comment would be no less heartless and absurd if you said "another person dies of cancer - BFD." If we were not on this forum, I'd say "fu** you". Instead, I'll defer to the decorum of the board's TOS and simply (and sincerely) say that I honestly hope addiction doesn't EVER take from you anyone that you love.

theOTHERwhitemeat wrote:

what he said wrote:

this^^^

Somebody will rip this apart, and that's fine... the guy was found with a needle in his arm.

You two obviously don't know the difficulties of addiction. He was sober for 23 years and relapsed last year.

It is a struggle day in and day out. Heroin is a terrible drug to shake once you've done it. I wish people would stop thinking they can handle it because the truth is nobody can.

Hope the sun is shining bright throughout your respective glass houses.

So why take it in the first place

As for glasshouses is one of us did this everyone would just say what a loser

Aside from the od issue, he might have been a great actor but he gave me the creeps and I could never identify with him

living in reality wrote:

Bummer.

Totally. This bites, he was a phenomenal talent.

Stay away from heroin.

Did he live in Greenwich Village, NYC? I was walking through the West Village yesterday and saw a bunch of news vans camped around a particular block, which was all lit up, but I didn't see any actual activity going on.

Anyway, if you scroll down here (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Seymour_Hoffman

) you can see a list of his acting roles and the associated nominations/awards. There were a bunch, esp. in his later years. I only knew a little about his personal life, and care less, but it's pretty obvious that a fine actor is gone. That sucks.

Doclove wrote:

theOTHERwhitemeat wrote:

You two obviously don't know the difficulties of addiction. He was sober for 23 years and relapsed last year.

It is a struggle day in and day out. Heroin is a terrible drug to shake once you've done it. I wish people would stop thinking they can handle it because the truth is nobody can.

Hope the sun is shining bright throughout your respective glass houses.

So why take it in the first place

As for glasshouses is one of us did this everyone would just say what a loser

Aside from the od issue, he might have been a great actor but he gave me the creeps and I could never identify with him

Sober for 23 years? You naive twit. All heroin addicts are liars who hide their habit.

I enjoyed his acting, but he wasted his life. Sad.

dR Trollingwood wrote:

I enjoyed his acting, but he wasted his life. Sad.

Although his death seems sadly premature and perhaps preventable, I wouldn't say that he wasted his life. His body of work is, I believe, as impressive as that of any actor in history. He enriched the lives of many thousands of people, including me. He was, by every account that I can recall, a good and sensitive soul, concerned about his community and deeply caring for his family. (Although it should not need to be mentioned, there is nothing contradictory about caring for one's family and dying from a heroin overdose.)

Selfishly, I would have liked to see him in more films. But I haven't watched all of his performances yet.

Avocado's Number wrote:

dR Trollingwood wrote:

I enjoyed his acting, but he wasted his life. Sad.

Although his death seems sadly premature and perhaps preventable, I wouldn't say that he wasted his life. His body of work is, I believe, as impressive as that of any actor in history. He enriched the lives of many thousands of people, including me. He was, by every account that I can recall, a good and sensitive soul, concerned about his community and deeply caring for his family. (Although it should not need to be mentioned, there is nothing contradictory about caring for one's family and dying from a heroin overdose.)

Selfishly, I would have liked to see him in more films. But I haven't watched all of his performances yet.

He clearly was a troubled person but these platitudes about how much he did for the community and how much he cared about his family are getting ridiculous. He was fabulously successful and wealthy but I don't ever recall hearing about his involvement with the community or charities. Everything that I have read is that he was private and almost a recluse. There's nothing wrong with that but please hold off on the nonsense about how much he cared about the community because, as far as I can tell, he didn't care about it anymore than most people (which isn't much).

I also beg to differ about how much he cared about his family? How do you know that? Do you know that he never was shooting up with the kids around? Don't you think that if he cared that much about the well-being of his kids, he would have done everything possible not to shoot up with some awful kind of heroine that ultimately killed him. Now his three kids have to grow up fatherless.

He was a great actor -- one of the best of this generation -- and the world he left is a better place due to many of his great performances but just leave it at that and don't try and embellish his persona with made-up facts about him.

renounded thespian

imagine being so F-up that you feel the need to take cancer medication

i can't even drink a cup of coffee... it mess up my day

renounded thespian

imagine being so F-up that you feel the need to take cancer medication

i can't even drink a cup of coffee... it mess up my day

It turns my stomach reading the fawning, excuse ridden stories about this guy.

Everyone is in such a hurry to make excuses for his drug use. The excuse for drugs is first with his acting roles, then the children he selfishly left are fatherless are either not referred to, or given a footnote mention.

It's almost like being an addict is a badge of honor. Did you ever stop to consider how much damage he has done to his kids already? And now they have to deal with this?

Having an addict in your life is like a big sucking hole. You can never do enough, they always are looking for someone or something else to enable them.

Thankfully the one in my life bucked the f__k up, realized their responsibility and stayed clean, and there are a lot of other regular people have quietly done it too. They are the ones we should holding up for acclaim, not this weak willed slob.

By most accounts Hoffman was a decent human being, though he had a drug habit. When are people going to accept that drug addiction is a disease and that addicts aren't just selfish hedonists looking to get high at any cost. We don't throw stones at the mentally ill so why do we do it with drug addicts. Hoffman had a problem, knew he had a problem, sought professional help but he eventually succumbed to his illness. Drug addiction is a cumpulsion that the addict can't fight throw willpower. It is hard for non addicts to understand so they say superficial things like why don't addicts just look at the cost and stop. Hoffman at least knew he had a problem and sought to get help for it.

It's about not starting in the first place. We are told that no good ever comes out of drug use so the choice to not start should be a pretty easy one.

Hard to become an addict if you never find out what you might be missing out on.

Hoffman 'bucked up' and stayed clean for 20+ years but fell off the wagon. Hopefully the one in your life will stay clean too. It is a life long fight. I just wish people showed more empathy to addicts.

HoJoHo wrote:

By most accounts Hoffman was a decent human being, though he had a drug habit. When are people going to accept that drug addiction is a disease and that addicts aren't just selfish hedonists looking to get high at any cost. We don't throw stones at the mentally ill so why do we do it with drug addicts. Hoffman had a problem, knew he had a problem, sought professional help but he eventually succumbed to his illness. Drug addiction is a cumpulsion that the addict can't fight throw willpower. It is hard for non addicts to understand so they say superficial things like why don't addicts just look at the cost and stop. Hoffman at least knew he had a problem and sought to get help for it.

I think most people accept that addiction is a disease but the disagreement is over how to view it. Unless you are born a crack baby (or something similar), then you, in your own free will, chose to start using drugs/booze way back when that led to your addiction. That's very different than waking up one morning and being diagnosed with ALS that your acts had zero to do with. I view addiction similar to someone who chooses to do something that he/she knows is bad and then eventually has something bad happen to him/her. Do you feel as badly for someone who smokes for 30 years and then dies of lung cancer as someone who out of the blue gets diagnosed with pancreatic cancer? I don't even though both outcomes are the same.

It's easier said than done, especially when you're a celebrity and have more access and exposure to drugs.

goaty moaty wrote:

He clearly was a troubled person but these platitudes about how much he did for the community and how much he cared about his family are getting ridiculous. He was fabulously successful and wealthy but I don't ever recall hearing about his involvement with the community or charities. Everything that I have read is that he was private and almost a recluse. There's nothing wrong with that but please hold off on the nonsense about how much he cared about the community because, as far as I can tell, he didn't care about it anymore than most people (which isn't much).

You obviously don't know much about him. He was not at all a recluse(although he could play one very well), and he was very much involved in his community. If "everything that [you] have read is that he was private and almost a recluse," you "don't ever recall hearing about his involvement with the community, and "as far as [you] can tell, he didn't care about [his community] anymore than most people (which isn't much)," then you are simply ignorant about the man. There's nothing wrong with that; I'm ignorant about lots of things, too. But I don't think that you add to the discussion by expressing your ignorance, or by declaring that it is "nonsense" to make a statement about something about which you have no information. (I also wouldn't describe PSH as "fabulously" wealthy, at least when compared with many others in his industry, but that's apparently just another incorrect assumption that you're making about the guy.)

By the way, I don't think that you quite understand the meaning of the word "platitude." Here's a somewhat better example of a platitude: "if he cared that much about the well-being of his kids, he would have done everything possible not to shoot up with some awful kind of heroine [sic] that ultimately killed him."