Following his tragic death yesterday, fans of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman are left trying to piece together what exactly took place before his death that led to this outcome — as well as still trying to process this terrible news. According to People, those who were close to Philip Seymour Hoffman aren't any closer to figuring out what happened during his final hours than anyone else is.
It was playwright David Katz who found Hoffman, dead of an apparent overdose, yesterday in Manhattan. As previously reported, Hoffman and Katz had been working together recently, so when Hoffman was a no-show to pick up his kids from his girlfriend, Mimi O'Donnell's, place, she called Katz to check on him. Katz went to Hoffman's fourth-floor West Village apartment at 35 Bethune St., and found the late actor laying lifeless in his bathroom, a needle stuck in his left forearm. Near him were two glassine envelopes, containing a substance that police would later determine to be heroin. Eight more glassine envelopes, all empty, were also found around the apartment.
"He was clean and sober, his old self," Katz told the New York Times of Hoffman's longtime struggle with drug addiction after the news broke. "I really thought this chapter was over."
Hoffman had struggled with addiction for years, and just last May checked himself into rehab in an effort to get clean. Back in 2006, Hoffman spoke candidly about his history with drugs in an interview with 60 Minutes, explaining that he was young and fresh out of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts when it began. "It was all that [drugs and alcohol], yeah, it was anything I could get my hands on… I liked it all," Hoffman said. "I went [to rehab], I got sober when I was 22 years old. You get panicked… and I got panicked for my life. It really was just that."
According to People's account of Hoffman's final days, the actor had been spotted at one of his neighborhood haunts, Automatic Slims, just the previous night, when he came in around 7:30 p.m. for dinner with two other men.
"They were in an out within an hour," says a bartender. "They were deep in conversation. He had a cranberry and soda and a cheeseburger." The table also shared an order of guacamole and chips. "He seemed fine," says the bartender, who noted Hoffman did not drink alcohol that night. "One guy had a beer and he didn't."
Hoffman is survived by his partner of 15 years O'Donnell, and his three childen. He was 46.
