Playing the Margins

Philip Seymour Hoffman knows how to make you wince. Remember his Scotty, the hapless gofer who desperately lunged to kiss porn star Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights? Or his wrenching portrayal of Allen, the obscene phone caller in Todd Solondz's Happiness? Now Joel Schumacher's Flawless brings us Rusty, a transsexual who befriends a homophobic stroke victim played by Robert De Niro. It's a typically gutsy performance that tightropes between drag-queen camp and the pathos of a man who believes he's the butt of a biological practical joke.

What keeps moviegoers watching is, well, Hoffman himself, embodying these down-and-outers with a skill and conviction that are swiftly making him Hollywood's most unlikely leading man since that other Hoffman, Dustin, stammered through The Graduate the year Philip was born. By year's end the 32-year-old actor will appear not only in Flawless, but also in two of this Oscar season's most anticipated offerings: as a compassionate nurse in Anderson's Magnolia and as an expatriate blueblood in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley.

Not bad for a guy who went for his first audition at 15 to chase a girl, Amy, who was sweet on his older brother. Hoffman grew up in suburban Rochester, N.Y., a baseball jock who often attended regional-theater productions with his mother. "When I was in, like, seventh grade, I saw Robert Downey Jr. in Alms for the Middle Class," he recalls. "I loved it. Loved it." High school acting led to drama school at New York University, off-Broadway theater and, finally, Hollywood.

Directors exhaust superlatives extolling Hoffman's craft. "He's extraordinarily committed to infinitesimal detail," says Schumacher. "I don't think there's anything he can't do," raves Minghella. Adds Solondz: "Whatever genius is, he has it. He's fearless. I love him."

Hoffman simply talks about giving audiences common ground with the most ostensibly unlovable of souls. "Actors are responsible to the people we play," he says. "I don't label or judge. I just play them as honestly and expressively and creatively as I can, in the hope that people who would ordinarily turn their heads in disgust instead think, 'What I thought I'd feel about that guy, I don't totally feel right now.'"

Next year Hoffman will portray his first romantic lead in David Mamet's State and Main, opposite Rebecca Pidgeon, but he scoffs at the notion of Hollywood stardom. He will, he says, continue living in New York City, doing theater (he'll make his Broadway debut in a revival of Sam Shepard's True West in February) and worrying about his love life. "I date," he says. "But it's a nightmare. You're traveling all the time. I gotta figure it out, because I want to get married and have kids someday." Listening, Amy? There's still time to give this guy at least one happy ending.