Australian film and theatre celebrities have described the death of Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman as an "extraordinary loss".
Seymour Hoffman was found dead in his New York apartment after a suspected drug overdose on Sunday (Monday AEDT). He was 46.
The US actor directed Andrew Upton's play Riflemind in Sydney and in London and also True West at the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) in 2010.
Upton, the STC's artistic director, described Seymour Hoffman as an incredible man.
"A generous and true spirit - the loss is extraordinary," Upton says.
Australian actor Brendan Cowell had spoken with Seymour Hoffman about the Oscar winner's struggle with substance abuse.
Cowell worked with Seymour Hoffman when the American directed the Sam Shepard play, True West.
"He had his three kids with him and his wife, and he was going for jogs in the morning and loving the beach. He looked like a very happy man," Cowell told ABC radio.
Hoffman - whose recent movies included The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and The Master - won an Oscar for best actor in 2006 for Capote and was seen as one of the pre-eminent actors of his generation.
Australian Oscar-winning director Adam Elliot says Philip Seymour Hoffman was a chameleon who brought authenticity to even the most challenging characters.
The Academy Award-winning actor voiced Max in Australian director Adam Elliot's stop-motion animation film, Mary and Max.
"It was a hard character to pitch to him because, you know, my lead character Max is a very overweight, Jewish atheist with Asperger's syndrome," Elliot told ABC radio.
He says he didn't have much time to rehearse with Hoffman.
"He was like Meryl Streep, he was a real chameleon and could just get the character so quickly and he was so authentic too."
Elliot says he felt lucky to have Seymour Hoffman work on his film as he was only able to pay him a paltry fee, compared with other big budget Hollywood films.
"We had peanuts to offer but he was one of those actors who did put the craft of acting first," he says.
"He is a very serious man and he doesn't suffer fools," he said. "Like a lot of the world's best comedians there is a dark side, which at times aides his work but also, of course, can tear a person down."
Hollywood stars and critics alike have also paid tribute to the actor. Film critic, Leonard Martin, has described his passing as a tremendous loss.
"It's a tremendous loss because he is one of the great actors of our generation and of his generation. And amazingly versatile. I don't think there is anything he couldn't do."
"He did comedic roles, tragic roles and everything in between. Devoted to the theatre and the stage where he got his start, and yet equally at home, in you know, major bloackbuster movies like 'The Hunger Games'."
Born Philip Hoffman in July 1967 in New York state, he was the third of four children of a Xerox executive and a feminist housewife who divorced when he was nine.
An avid athlete, the stocky youth became involved in school theatrics after suffering an injury. He earned a drama degree from New York University in 1989, though he fell into alcohol and drug abuse for a while.
In 1997, he made a quiet splash as a closeted gay crew member who makes a tentative pass at star Mark Wahlberg in Paul Thomas Anderson's porn industry tale Boogie Nights, followed by a quirky turn as a toady in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski (1998).
In Anthony Minghella's unique crime thriller The Talented Mr Ripley, he stole the show from co-stars Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow with his stealthy supporting role as slippery and duplicitous preppie Freddie Miles.
The late Minghella once said that Hoffman was an extraordinary actor "cursed, sometimes, by his own gnawing intelligence, his own discomfort with acting".
"There are few actors more demanding in front of camera, less demanding away from it."
The hard-working actor played music reporter Lester Bangs in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000) and then took on the role of a lonely lecher in Todd Solondz's Happiness (1998).
But, for all his success, Hoffman was a reluctant occupant of the limelight and in an interview with the Guardian published in October 2011 said he thought everyone struggles with self-love.
"I think that's pretty much the human condition, you know, waking up and trying to live your day in a way that you can go to sleep and feel OK about yourself," he was quoted as saying.
On the stage, he performed in revivals of True West, Long Day's Journey Into Night and The Seagull.
In 2012, he was more than equal to one of the great roles in American theatre - Willy Loman in Death Of A Salesman, a performance praised as heartbreaking by Associated Press theatre critic Mark Kennedy.
"Hoffman is only 44. But he nevertheless sags in his brokenness like a man closer to retirement age, lugging about his sample cases filled with his self-denial and disillusionment," Kennedy wrote.
"His fraying connection to reality is pronounced in this production, with Hoffman quick to anger and a hard edge emerging from his babbling."
