Philip Seymour Hoffman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

3. Lester Bangs - Almost Famous

Hoffman's appearance - slightly pudgy, doughy, with thinning blonde hair - wasn't exactly your typical matinee idol look, but the actor was grateful for his appearance as it made him believable in a wide range of roles. It did somewhat limit the number of real-life figures he could play, however, to people who actually looked like him. The actor appeared in only a couple of biopics during his voluminous career, a similarity to former CIA agent Gust Avrakotos getting him cast in Charlie Wilson's War. Before that he embodied one of the most iconic music critics of all time (who just so happened to be a slightly pudgy, doughy guy with thinning blonde hair), playing Lester Bangs in 2000's Almost Famous. Loosely based on writer-director Cameron Crowe's own experience as a teenage journalist for Rolling Stone, Almost Famous blends together a fictitious seventies rock group called Stillwater, real stories Crowe lived through during the era, famous urban legends about groupies and rock star excess, and actual historical figures. Where Stillwater never existed and Kate Hudson's character is a stand-in for an actual infamous groupie of the age, the journalist Patrick Fugit's William Miller goes to for advice about his burgeoning writing career was very real, very influential, and definitely a character. A trailblazing music critic who took the bands of the time more seriously than anyone else, everybody knows who Lester Bangs is. Which makes it all the more impressive that Hoffman's portrayal of him never tips over into caricature or pantomime; instead, he takes a handful of the tics and visual cues of the legend that is Lester Bangs, and spun him into a living, breathing character who you can never quite tell is either a genius or a lunatic. Probably somewhere in between.