You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. Itโs a clichรฉ thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just donโt know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I donโt know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and itโs not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And thatโs hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI think Magnolia is one of the best films I've ever seen and I can say that straight and out and anybody that disagrees with me I'll fight you to the death. I just think it is one of the greatest films I've ever been in and ever seen.
Philip Seymour HoffmanFilms are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI know some really great actors who are pretty judgmental people, pretty critical people. But they're great actors. When they're acting, that's the craft.
Philip Seymour HoffmanIf I was a little bit younger I would worry more. I'd want to do one thing at a time but now I try to do a bunch of different things at a time if I can.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI feel like the need to want to create and make something is stronger than the difficulties are going through.
Philip Seymour HoffmanYou know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he'll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI know that obviously, that if you want to get the story, if you want to get close to somebody, if you want to find out what is really the truth or what's really interesting, you have to create a trust between these two things, between the journalist and the subject.
Philip Seymour HoffmanMy favorite thing about acting is being alone and going through the scripts and working on it and getting ideas and asking myself questions, looking outside myself for them and researching and getting to the bottom of something and being creative with it as an actor and how to express it in a creative fashion. That's my favorite part. And, the actual acting of it.
Philip Seymour HoffmanWhen you become a parent, you look at your parents differently. You look at being a child differently. It's an awakening, a revelation that you have.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI try to live my life in such a way that I don't have any regrets. That's probably why I work so much. I don't want to feel I missed something important.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'd be dead.'
Philip Seymour HoffmanMy love for the theater has always been a priority. That hasn't changed. I got into acting that way. The film work that came up was really a surprise.
Philip Seymour HoffmanWhen you're acting, you're subjective; when you're a director, you're more objective.You're kind of watching from the outside and helping others, and therefore I learn my mistakes through others, and also my assets through others.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI would never not work on the part without it playing. That's what being an actor is. You use everything that's influenced you to help you get out of yourself or be more creative.
Philip Seymour HoffmanWhen you read, you think, and when you smoke, you think. It's a pleasurable thing, and not a duty.
Philip Seymour HoffmanSometimes I have a great day of filming and sometimes the theater strikes me better. It just depends.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI was a breed of people who aren't capable of doing anything, really. At college I began to get the idea that being macho wasn't the accepted norm in the liberal world, and especially the world I entered into, which was the artistic world. I had a lot of problems with that because I was struggling with the need to be proud of being a man, which wasn't something I was feeling.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI always knew where I needed to go but I sometimes had a problem getting there, so I had to work harder at it. Once in a while I'd wanna take off the blouse and heels because I'd get that "I just wanna be a guy" feeling I had when growing up.
Philip Seymour HoffmanA lot of people describe me as chubby, which seems so easy, so first-choice. Or stocky. Fair-skinned. Tow-headed. There are so many other choices. How about dense? I mean, I'm a thick kind of guy. But I'm never described in attractive ways. I'm waiting for somebody to say I'm at least cute. But nobody has.
Philip Seymour HoffmanMy mum's name is Marilyn O'Connor. She's here tonight and I would like if you see her for you to congratulate her because she brought up four kids alone and she deserves congratulations for that.
Philip Seymour HoffmanSuccess isn't what makes you happy. It really isn't. Success is doing what makes you happy and doing good work and hopefully having a fruitful life. If I've felt like I've done good work, that makes me happy. The success part of it is all gravy.
Philip Seymour HoffmanIf you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you're given a free chance to practice your craft.
Philip Seymour HoffmanActing is so difficult for me that, unless the work is of a certain stature in my mind, unless I reach the expectations I have of myself, I'm unhappy. Then it's a miserable existence. I'm putting a piece of myself out there. If it doesn't do anything, I feel so ashamed. I'm afraid I'll be the kind of actor who thought he would make a difference and didn't. Right now, though, I feel like I made a little bit of difference.
Philip Seymour HoffmanLife is short. Time is short. As we get older, time does quicken. It's long, and it's long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can't rid of it.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI 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 HoffmanBob Glaudini, the writer, he's a wonderfully talented man and all his plays and his screenplays, they all have sense of something bigger, even though you're looking at something very simple.
Philip Seymour HoffmanThere's nothing risky in talking about your personal life. People do it all the time.
Philip Seymour HoffmanI think good art, if I could be pretentious enough to say, I think good art deals with the micro to explain the macro.
Philip Seymour Hoffman