Philip Seymour Hoffman

As I was ramping up the adrenaline to watch the Super Bowl last night, I found out that Philip Seymour Hoffman had died, most likely from a heroin overdose.

My immediate reaction was chills. Chills because I love every movie of his that I have seen. Chills because his sensitivity in many roles connected with my heart and my soul.

Chills because the sensitivity that he exuded on screen seemed to me to be a big part of who he really was. He felt real to me.

Great actors can make you feel. But you can often sense a separation between the actor and the emotion.

Sensitive actors somehow use that as part of their performance. There is no separation. You know, you feel in your soul, that the character is them and they are the character. They draw you in and make you feel what their character is feeling.

You lose yourself in the movie just as the actor loses himself in the part.

I don't know how they do that without destroying themselves.

Maybe it can't be done.

Heroin always catches people by surprise. You expect to know that a junkie on the corner will OD. You don't expect Philip Seymour Hoffman to die with a needle in his arm.

Except when you consider the sensitivity  angle. Some people just cannot deal with this world. It is cold and aloof, it is unpredictable, quick to punish and slow to reward.

Even a successful and loved guy like Hoffman can be tortured inside. Being an actor is a handy tool for hiding anguish.

That doesn't explain it all, though. From what I have read, he had been off the stuff for 20 years.

So why now, why again in the last few years?

Nothing is ever black and white, nothing is ever what it seems.

"Jack Goes Boating" is a movie of his that I have not seen included in one write-up of his life. But it is a movie that moved me deeply.

He played a sensitive and shy guy who goes on a blind date with a sensitive and shy woman. They end up in a delicate romance.

He played that part with aching vulnerability and it blew me away. He brought tears to my eyes. He summoned emotions in me that brought delicate human nature to the surface.

An actor who can bring that depth of emotion to a character is a born actor. A man whose purpose it is to make us feel human again when the world wants nothing less than to strip us of all emotion.

The sensitive and the truly creative souls in this world burn out early, while the hard hearted endure.

There is something so wrong with that equation.

Couple of quotes for you to chew on:

Jim Carrey: "Dear Philip, a beautiful, beautiful soul. For the most sensitive among us the noise can be too much. Bless your heart."

Philip Seymour Hoffman on acting: "For me, acting is torturous, and its torturous because you know it's a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, 'That's beautiful and I want that.' Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great -- well, that's absolutely torturous."