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"  Published in the November 2012 issue, on sale any day now Late lunch at Cafe Cluny in Manhattan&amp;#039;s West Village. SCOTT RAAB: You wanna face the room or the wall? PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN: You can face the room if you want. SR: I saw The Master Monday night. Have you seen it yet? PSH: I&amp;#039;ve seen cuts of it. SR: It&amp;#039;s intense. It&amp;#039;s beautiful. I walked out of the screening into Times Square really dumbstruck. PSH: Paul Thomas Anderson is incomparable. SR: Do you think the Scientologists are going to be upset about the premise? PSH: I have no idea. It&amp;#039;s obviously not a movie about Scientology. Anyone who sees it walks away and realizes that. I think there&amp;#039;s an interest to make something of it. I think the film is about so many things. I&amp;#039;ve been involved with it for three years, so I see it differently. SR: Three years is a long time. PSH: That&amp;#039;s the best way to do a film. That&amp;#039;s the way you rehearse \u2014 you develop it, you work with the writer and director and talk and bullshit, and then you eventually shoot and you&amp;#039;re on the same page. Film&amp;#039;s hard when you don&amp;#039;t have any relationship with the director at all and you just show up. Then you really are just a gun for hire. But that doesn&amp;#039;t happen so often with me. I&amp;#039;m lucky that way. [To waiter]: I&amp;#039;ll go with the fris\u00E9e salad with chicken. SR: I&amp;#039;ll do the same. [To Hoffman] Are you working now? PSH: I&amp;#039;ve got stuff coming up in the fall. SR: You&amp;#039;re going to be in the next Hunger Games. PSH: That, and hopefully this other film in Germany. SR: Do you live around here? PSH: I do live around here. SR: Are you in the phone book? PSH: I have no idea. Maybe. SR: There&amp;#039;s a Philip S. Hoffman listed in the phone book. PSH: It might be someone else. SR: I wasn&amp;#039;t going to call. PSH: I&amp;#039;m just saying, there&amp;#039;s another guy, Philip Hoffman. That&amp;#039;s why I have a middle name, because there&amp;#039;s another guy in the union. SR: You&amp;#039;re all right with that? PSH: I&amp;#039;m okay with that. SR: I was hoping to get Philip Baker Hall and now I got you. It&amp;#039;s a joke. I love that guy. PSH: But when you say it&amp;#039;s a joke before you finish with the joke... SR: Halfway through I thought I might be insulting you. PSH: But I like Philip Baker Hall. SR: I recently saw you in Death of a Salesman on Broadway. That had to be a very hard job. PSH: It was a very hard job, yeah. In plays like that, you kind of have to go there so that everyone goes there with you. It&amp;#039;s difficult. It&amp;#039;s a hard job. Those are hard jobs. SR: Physically and spiritually. PSH: You&amp;#039;ve got to be ready. You&amp;#039;ve got to want to do it. SR: Something like Mission: Impossible III has got to be less taxing. PSH: There are things that are less taxing. Theater&amp;#039;s the most taxing. But to act well is always difficult, no matter the material. SR: Do you ever try to do something that you know isn&amp;#039;t going to make the same emotional demands? PSH: I don&amp;#039;t make the choice based on that. That&amp;#039;s just how it works out. I also direct and stuff, so I can take the break from the acting.... Some people keep going back into those kinds of roles. I don&amp;#039;t think they have kids. SR: In The Master, the level of intensity between you and Joaquin Phoenix is just unbelievable. How do you not carry that around while you&amp;#039;re not shooting? PSH: It&amp;#039;s what we do, so we know it&amp;#039;s about the work and the film and the story and the characters. But acting&amp;#039;s a personal thing. Hopefully the people you work with have a healthy enough sense of that, so it doesn&amp;#039;t carry over into something else. But you go through something together, for sure. If you&amp;#039;re in the middle of a scene, it&amp;#039;s very tough, but hopefully you finish things before meals, so you can relax. SR: Do you write at all? PSH: No. I&amp;#039;m just not a screenwriter. Maybe someday I will. I&amp;#039;ve left that alone, but I like writing. SR: I&amp;#039;m always amazed at the range of talents people have. PSH: People want you to stay in your corner a lot of the time. You kind of want to change, you know? Everybody does. SR: I think you have to. PSH: It&amp;#039;s been less of an issue for me, since from a very young age I&amp;#039;ve been doing other things. I&amp;#039;ve been directing and producing. People who are my age now [45], you can tell that they want to do something else and it&amp;#039;s difficult. It&amp;#039;s tricky. [Raab pops a lozenge.] SR: Nicotine replacement. PSH: Yeah, I quit a year ago. SR: I&amp;#039;ve been addicted to these a long time. PSH: What is that? SR: Just two milligrams of nicotine. I&amp;#039;m addicted. The same behavior rules my life when it comes to food. PSH: I&amp;#039;m with you. The amount of weight I gained doing Death of a Salesman, I&amp;#039;m trying to take off. [To waiter] Can I get a double macchiato? SR [To waiter]: Just a coffee. Regular coffee. [To Hoffman] How much weight did you gain for Death of a Salesman? PSH: I didn&amp;#039;t gain weight for it. I gained weight while doing it. I&amp;#039;ve lost some since then. But I&amp;#039;ve got more to go. I can&amp;#039;t carry the extra weight. My knees and hips are fked. SR: I just bought a treadmill. PSH: I&amp;#039;m not working out as much as I want to, but it&amp;#039;s more about the eating. The weight comes off, you know? If you stop with the bread and the pie, it really does. It really works. SR: And you have more energy. PSH: When I was getting ready to do The Master, I lost a bunch of weight. It was the best I&amp;#039;ve felt in a long time. I was light on my feet. SR: Did you get under 200?  PSH: No. Two hundred for me, I&amp;#039;m thin. SR: You&amp;#039;re a thick guy. PSH: That&amp;#039;s how us Hoffmans are built. My ideal weight is 205, actually. When I did Capote, I was rail-thin. It was the only time I had a six-pack. I was 195. Can you imagine? I&amp;#039;m five nine and a half. That&amp;#039;s crazy. SR: Last time I talked to my mother, she asks, &amp;quot;Who are you interviewing next?&amp;quot; I say, &amp;quot;Philip Seymour Hoffman,&amp;quot; and she says, &amp;quot;Who?&amp;quot; I invoke Capote. &amp;quot;He won the fking Oscar,&amp;quot; I say. She&amp;#039;s in her 80s and lives in Cleveland, but she does watch movies. It&amp;#039;s amazing that you&amp;#039;ve been able to have this body of work and maintain some anonymity. PSH: I think about that a lot. I feel it cracking lately, the older I&amp;#039;m getting. I think I&amp;#039;m less anonymous than I was. And I think nowadays it&amp;#039;s so easy for people to watch things. In the past five years, our images \u2014 yours, everyone&amp;#039;s \u2014 are everywhere. No one&amp;#039;s watching more movies. It&amp;#039;s just that the images are being seen more. It&amp;#039;s going to be more difficult for the young actors coming up today to keep a low profile. No one can. SR: I don&amp;#039;t know how many young actors want to keep a low profile. PSH: I think some people don&amp;#039;t, but I think some people do. And it&amp;#039;s going to be very hard for those young people who do, because there&amp;#039;s no way around it. It&amp;#039;s not just actors. It&amp;#039;s people in general. Everyone&amp;#039;s being Twittered about. SR: Do you read reviews? PSH: Sometimes I take a temperature of things just because everyone else does. Especially when I&amp;#039;m doing a play. I want to know what people are thinking, positive or negative. So I take a temperature and then I stop. I&amp;#039;ll read a couple and then skim a couple more and then, all of a sudden, that&amp;#039;s it. Then I don&amp;#039;t have the desire anymore. And that&amp;#039;s true whether the response is good or bad. Mixed, bad, good \u2014 they all make you feel the same way. That&amp;#039;s why you have to stop. Because none of them ultimately make you feel okay. But I think you&amp;#039;re asking a lot of other people to be responsible for your feelings when you don&amp;#039;t read anything. I don&amp;#039;t know what you mean, I didn&amp;#039;t read it. I don&amp;#039;t know. It&amp;#039;s like, C&amp;#039;mon, really? There&amp;#039;s too many people I have to interact with, and I don&amp;#039;t want them to have to worry about hurting my feelings. SR: You said about Magnolia, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s one of the best films I&amp;#039;ve ever seen and I will fight to the death with anyone who says otherwise.&amp;quot; PSH: It&amp;#039;s true. It&amp;#039;s a smorgasbord of pleasure, that movie. Filmed pleasures. SR: Especially Jason Robards. He lived hard. He drank hard. And that was really the end for him. PSH: That was the end. That was his last thing. That speech he has is like three times longer on the page. It&amp;#039;s like an eight-page monologue. It&amp;#039;s massively long. I remember he came in and they needed a 20-minute mag [film-camera magazine] to shoot it, because that&amp;#039;s how long it&amp;#039;s going to take for them to do it. And he did the whole thing. He didn&amp;#039;t call for a line. Boom. I looked at Paul and he was gobsmacked. Wow, not only was that really well done, but he wasn&amp;#039;t well at the time. SR: Paul has an amazing eye for talent. I can understand recognizing talent, but to assemble it and let it rise and have its way, how many people can do that? PSH: People who are honest about their humanity can do that. I think Paul&amp;#039;s honest about who humans are. I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it&amp;#039;s not about you at the end of the day. He knows what he&amp;#039;s good at. That&amp;#039;s the thing about Paul. And what he&amp;#039;s good at he&amp;#039;s better at than probably anybody. SR: Are you aware of [former Oakland A&amp;#039;s manager] Art Howe&amp;#039;s reaction to your portrayal of him in Moneyball? PSH: Yeah. He&amp;#039;s not very happy. I kind of hope I get to meet Art Howe one day and tell him, Listen, Art. I actively did not play you, okay? You should&amp;#039;ve taken your name off it. SR: They did that with Jonah Hill&amp;#039;s character, [Paul] DePodesta. PSH: This wasn&amp;#039;t enough of a part that it was gonna represent Art Howe at all. So I had to do a job. I was a tool. I had to play him a certain way to create a problem. But I knew there&amp;#039;s no way I could fill out who Art Howe was with what was written there. And so he has every right. He needs to know. Art, I know that was not a fair representation of you as a person whatsoever. The story was about something else. SR: I&amp;#039;ve read that you hate the thought of singing. But in both Magnolia and The Master, you sing. PSH: It&amp;#039;s a very nerve-racking thing for me to sing, though it&amp;#039;s perfect for that scene in The Master. It was a very nerve-racking scene. I remember practicing that song just to learn how to sing it and not thinking about the scene at all. It&amp;#039;s such anxiety. I can hold a note, but I have admiration and respect for the people who can actually do that in front of 2,000 people. It just blows me away. It&amp;#039;s a vulnerable thing to do. SR: Does working on a film like The Master create the same kind of vulnerability even though you&amp;#039;re not on a stage? PSH: What you go through with another actor in a good play or film, something that&amp;#039;s well-written and that means something deeply to both of you, is a very intimate thing. It&amp;#039;s like, I&amp;#039;m here for you, you&amp;#039;re here for me. And you&amp;#039;re silently pushing each other forward and up. You&amp;#039;ll never look at those people the same way again for the rest of your life. I can go ten years and not see Joaquin Phoenix or John Reilly [Hoffman&amp;#039;s costar in the play True West] or Andrew Garfield [his costar in Death of a Salesman], and then when I see them, the connection&amp;#039;s immediate \u2014 and that connection might be awkward \u2014 but it&amp;#039;s definitely going to be informed by the fact that we did something together that I&amp;#039;m not going to do with pretty much 99.99999 percent of people. Even people in my family. The really good actors go there \u2014 and Joaquin&amp;#039;s definitely one of those people. SR: He seemed older, thinner. He looked like a different human being. PSH: He was something else while we were shooting. His commitment was unparalleled. SR: Hope you don&amp;#039;t mind if I look at my notes. I just want to make sure that I&amp;#039;m not leaving out anything important. PSH: Oh, no. Definitely. I&amp;#039;m going to leave in five if that&amp;#039;s cool. SR: Oh, here&amp;#039;s my favorite quote of yours. &amp;quot;It isn&amp;#039;t easy to love something as much as you love a child.&amp;quot; PSH: The thing I realized when I became a father is why parents stay and why they take off. The love you feel and the responsibilities you feel, I can see why some people go. They think, I&amp;#039;m never going to make this. Because it puts all of the heartbreaks you&amp;#039;ve had in your life in perspective. You&amp;#039;re like, Oh, I thought that was a broken heart. That&amp;#039;s been my experience. Now I&amp;#039;m sure there are some people whose relationships with kids are different. My kids are just, uh, they&amp;#039;re good. They&amp;#039;re just good kids, man. SR: Will they be able to see The Hunger Games, you think? PSH: I don&amp;#039;t know. Maybe. SR: Boogie Nights? PSH: No, no. Oh, God, no. You can&amp;#039;t let them watch Little Bill blow his head off. That movie&amp;#039;s so upsetting in that way. It surprises you every time. Oh, I forgot! You forget how upsetting that movie really is. SR: Go, go. I don&amp;#039;t want to keep you. PSH: Let&amp;#039;s, uh... SR: No, the magazine pays. Thank you so much, sir. It was nice to meet you. PSH: Thank you, sir. It was my pleasure. SR: Keep on keepin&amp;#039;. PSH: I&amp;#039;ll try.   THE ESQUIRE DOSSIER: PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN DATE OF BIRTH: July 23, 1967 BORN AND GREW UP IN: Fairport, New York, outside Rochester PARTNER: Mimi O&amp;#039;Donnell (2002 to present) CHILDREN: Three WHEN THEY CAN SEE HIS WORK: &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;ve made anything my kids can watch until they&amp;#039;re like 40.... It&amp;#039;s funny, because I did a voice in an animated movie called Mary and Max.... And a guy like kills himself in it.... The one animated movie I make is for adults.&amp;quot; FAVORITE MOVIE: Bad News Bears FORMER OAKLAND A&amp;#039;S MANAGER ART HOWE&amp;#039;S THOUGHTS ON HOFFMAN&amp;#039;S DEPICTION OF HIM IN MONEYBALL: &amp;quot;Philip Seymour Hoffman physically didn&amp;#039;t resemble me in any way. He was a little on the heavy side. And just the way he portrayed me was very disappointing and probably 180 degrees from what I really am.&amp;quot; HOFFMAN&amp;#039;S TAKE: Agreed. (See interview.) BASEBALL ALLEGIANCE: Yankees; grew up watching them at his grandparents&amp;#039; house. DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS PHYSICAL APPEARANCE BY REPORTERS: &amp;quot;He came dressed as though he may have slept in the park.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Unshaven, nicotine-stained.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;His demeanor and appearance are so fundamentally regular that it seems impossible that he has played such a vast array of anything-but-regular characters.&amp;quot; NUMBER OF PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON FILMS IN WHICH HE&amp;#039;S FEATURED: Five TWISTER, HUH? &amp;quot;I was living in L. A. at the time.... and I knew if I took that job, I&amp;#039;d be able to move back to New York.&amp;quot;   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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