When you're playing someone who really lived, you carry a burden, a burden to be accurate.
Philip Seymour HoffmanTo have that concentration to act well is like lugging things up staircases in your brain. I think thatโs a thing people donโt understand. It is that exhausting. If youโre doing it well, if youโre concentrating the way you need to, if your will and your concentration and emotional and imagination and emotional life are all in tune, concentrated and working together in that role, that is just like lugging weights upstairs with your head... And I donโt think that should get any easier.
Philip Seymour HoffmanUltimately, all characters have some negative and positive energies. That's just how I see it. I didn't go out looking for negative characters; I went out looking for people who have a struggle and a fight to tackle. That's what interests me.
Philip Seymour HoffmanDirecting is a really kind of amazing thing, because you're helping others and, in the middle of that, you have to worry about yourself.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI've been reading a bunch of stuff lately - like Joseph Campbell - that has made me realize that people in our cultural, especially in the liberal community, often go in search of a foe. It's like we always need a hill to climb up or something to push against, or we feel as if we're not working constructively in the world.
Philip Seymour Hoffman