Philip Seymour Hoffman: A career in pictures

Tributes are being paid today to the actor after he was found dead in his Manhattan apartment following an apparent overdose

Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a scene from 'The Master'. The director, Paul Thomas Anderson, acknowledged that Hoffman's character was partially based on Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (AP)

Few actors have the talent to fully embody characters like Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Tributes are being paid today to the actor, whose latest role was in the Hunger Games series of films, after he was found dead in his Manhattan apartment following an apparent overdose.

From his work with Paul Thomas Anderson most famously in The Master, Magnolia and Boogie Nights to his Oscar winning performance in Bennett Miller’s biopic Capote, and a range of suitably eccentric and scene-stealing cameos, Hoffman was an utterly convincing character actor.

Hoffman's range was striking, from the peeping pervert in Todd Solondz's 1998 drama Happiness, one of the creepiest performances in American movies, to CIA operative Gust Avrakotos in Charlie Wilson’s War and the brattish and rich young American in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley, was a cinematic chameleon able to bring humanity to the oddest and most unsympathetic of characters.

Philip Seymour Hoffman's career in pictures

---

Watch a clip of Phillip Seymour Hoffman in his Oscar winning role in Capote