Philip Seymour Hoffman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Lancaster Dodd - The Master

Despite being, as we said up top, the greatest actor of his generation, Philip Seymour Hoffman only one Academy Award acknowledging as such during his lifetime: in 2005 he won the Best Actor gong for the eponymous role in Capote, but besides that, he only got nominated a paltry three times for the same Oscar. After that he was considered for his part in Charlie Wilson's War, his star turn as a priest accused of sexual wrongdoing in 2008's Doubt, and finally for his electrifying presence as the figurehead of a cult that's definitely not Scientology in 2012's The Master. He probably should've won for all of them, too, but especially The Master. Because he's bloody brilliant in it. His sixth and final collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master had a troubled production - partially because of legal wranglings with a certain nascent "religion" who don't like it when you appear to be criticising famed science fiction author L Ron Hubbard - but Hoffman remained on board throughout, eventually getting to play the part of the eccentric Lancaster Dodd, leader of a religious movement known as "The Cause", opposite Joaquin Phoenix's dangerously unhinged alcoholic World War II veteran. As per with Anderson's films The Master isn't short of stalwart performances, with Phoenix and Amy Adams also standing out, but Hoffman steals the show. The flipside to the uninhibited ID of Phoenix's Freddie Quell, Dodd is an enigmatic and hard to read figure who slowly worms his way into his charge's psyche, before exploding in the sort of spitting rage the actor could sell far better than any of his more melodramatic peers. Really, though, all you need to watch is the incredible fifteen minute processing scene from the film to get an idea of how special Hoffman was.