Oscar Award Winner Dies of Possible Overdose

02 Feb, 2014

Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the leading actors of his generation, who won an Academy Award for his title role in the film “Capote,” was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on Sunday in what a New York police source described as an apparent drug overdose.

Hoffman, 46, was found unresponsive on the bathroom floor of his Greenwich Village apartment by police responding to a 911 call, and Emergency Medical Service workers declared him dead on the scene, New York City police said in a statement. An investigation was ongoing.

A police spokesman said investigators found Hoffman with a syringe in his arm and recovered two small plastic bags in the apartment containing a substance suspected of being heroin.

Hoffman, who is survived by three children with his partner Mimi O’Donnell, had detailed his struggles with substance abuse in the past.

“We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Phil and appreciate the outpouring of love and support we have received from everyone,” Hoffman’s family said in a statement issued through his publicist.

“This is a tragic and sudden loss and we ask that you respect our privacy during this time of grieving. Please keep Phil in your thoughts and prayers,” it added. A representative said the family would not make any further statements for now.

Hoffman spoke in the past of struggling with drugs, including a 2006 interview in which he told CBS he had abused “anything I could get my hands on. I liked it all.”

His death, if confirmed from an overdose, would recall the 2008 death of actor Heath Ledger, who was found dead in his Manhattan apartment from a lethal combination of drugs.

Born in upstate New York near Rochester, Hoffman won the Best Actor Oscar for the 2005 biographical film “Capote,” in which he played writer Truman Capote. He also received three Academy Award nominations as best supporting actor, for “The Master” in 2013, “Doubt” in 2009 and “Charlie Wilson’s War” in 2008.

After more than a dozen earlier roles, Hoffman burst onto the film scene in 1997’s “Boogie Nights,” in which he played a lovelorn gay man in a movie about the porn industry that helped make Mark Wahlberg a star.

Reuters

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