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"  I had a lot of late nights in my mid-twenties. I was a gossip columnist back then working for the New York Daily News. Most evenings went on until well after midnight, at which point I would almost always manage to tear myself away from the festivities and get myself back to my West Village apartment in time to get at least a few hours of sleep before heading into the office.  My upstairs neighbor during this time was none other than the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. As news of his tragic and untimely death broke over the weekend, so too did stories from journalists about his seemingly endless well of kindness whether he was talking to them on a red carpet, doing a proper interview, or just shooting the shit at a party. It reminded me that my most memorable moments with the actor who I respected so much typically happened after midnight.  I smoked a lot in those days. I also dated a lot of inappropriate men.  Phil was a smoker. He told me I could call him Phil the first time we ran into one another on the stoop of our Sheridan Square apartment building as I was teetering home in some too high heels from one of those nameless nightclubs on the far West side on Manhattan. He didn&amp;#039;t like smoking in front of his kids, which was why he found himself out on the stoop. I asked him if he had a light and we spent a few minutes enjoying the kind of quiet that smokers who are also strangers somehow have the ability to enjoy. I thanked him and found my way inside to my pillow.  Related: Philip Seymour Hoffman&amp;#039;s Last Secret During the next year I had to interview him for work and so he understood that my job as a gossip columnist was to watch and then chronicle the lives of celebrities, but he never held it against me the way a lot of stars often do, believing that the people who write about them are typically beneath them or out to get them, or both. I was never out to get Phil. There wasn&amp;#039;t anything scandalous about him in those days. He was a great dad. I saw him with his adorably redheaded children going up and down in the elevator often with some memento of a daddy field trip or a sloppy ice cone. He was completely lucid every time we talked.  About once a month we would share one of those late night smokes. In the summer, when the air in the West Village turns into a terrible mucky soup he would just be in his delightfully rumpled pajamas, smoking away without a care in the world. Our five-minute conversations spun topics from Truman Capote to a very small man who lived in our building and owned an enormous Great Dane dog. Did the Great Dane sleep in the bed, we wondered, and the small man sleep on a pad in the kitchen? No matter the topic, Phil was funny, smart, well-spoken, and unpretentious. Over the two years that we shared a building we probably only spent a cumulative hour and a half together, but they were moments that I really cherished. One night, after a particularly messy breakup, I returned to the apartment a bit tipsy and in tears, mascara running down my face.  &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s wrong?&amp;quot; Phil asked as he helped me light a Parliament Light with shaky hands. &amp;quot;I got dumped,&amp;quot; I told him in a pathetic voice. Before the words were out of my mouth I was already chastising myself for telling this Academy Award-winning actor that someone had just dumped me. But he was curious and I wanted to tell anyone who would listen my sad sack of a story. &amp;quot;What happened?&amp;quot; he asked looking at me with all of the intensity of Truman Capote.  &amp;quot;He broke up with me over Gchat,&amp;quot; I said.  &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s Gchat?&amp;quot; he asked me back. &amp;quot;It is kind of like Instant Messenger.&amp;quot; He took a long pull of his cigarette. &amp;quot;That is worse than being dumped on a Post-it, isn&amp;#039;t it?&amp;quot; I believed that in that moment Philip Seymour Hoffman was making a Sex and the City reference which made me like him even more. I nodded that it was. &amp;quot;He doesn&amp;#039;t sound like he deserves a great girl like you,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;You should date guys who do.&amp;quot; Coming from anyone else it might have sounded judgmental, but not the way he said it. I nodded and we finished our cigarettes in silence. He patted me on the shoulder as he stubbed his into the pavement and walked back into the apartment building. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re going to be okay, kiddo,&amp;quot; he said. And, I was. I didn&amp;#039;t know Philip Seymour Hoffman well. I have always respected him as an actor and held this special place in my heart for a neighbor in New York City who spent the time to get to know a young kid living on her own trying to figure out her place in the world. As this story continues to unfold and as his actual friends and family gather to memorialize and mourn this great man, I feel blessed that I have those memories. Related: Remembering Philip Seymour Hoffman: An Ode to the Thinking Girl&amp;#039;s Dream Date  Photo: &amp;quot;Capote&amp;quot; Sony Pictures Classics/Courtesy Everett Collection "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a14085/remember-philip-seymour-hoffman-new-york/>