Philip Seymour Hoffman, 1967-2014.

“‘For me, acting is torturous,’ Hoffman told the New York Times in 2008, ‘and it’s torturous because you know it’s a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, That’s beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great—well, that’s absolutely torturous.’ Philip Seymour Hoffman, 1967–2014.

A.O. Scott: “We did not lose just a very good actor. We may have lost the best one we had. He was only 46, and his death, apparently from a drug overdose, foreshortened a career that was already monumental…He had a rare ability to illuminate the varieties of human ugliness. No one ever did it so beautifully.”

Derek Thompson: “He could puff himself up and play larger than life, but his specialty was to find the quiet dignity in life-sized characters—losers, outcasts, and human marginalia. It’s not clear that there were roles Philip Seymour Hoffman could not do. He had so many lives within him — and more, undiscovered and unseen. Those are the lives, aside from his own, we’ve now lost.”

Ugh. Easily the most depressing early celebrity death since Heath Ledger, all the more because of the circumstances involved. Note this must-read piece: “There is a particularly chilling aspect to Hoffman’s death that only another recovering addict can feel. He had 23 years clean, and then went back out.”

And, as the testimonials above indicate, Hoffman was arguably the best character actor working today. (His only peers I can think of offhand: Paul Giamatti, Sam Rockwell, and Jeffrey Wright.) He will be missed. As one inspired commenter put it at AICN, “Strong men also cry…strong men also cry.”

Must-See Hoffman: The 25th Hour, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Big Lebowski, Capote, Charlie Wilson’s War, Happiness, MI:3, The Savages, Synechdoche, New York, The Talented Mr. Ripley.

People Who Died.

“I thought of Jim not as my doppleganger, exactly — that would have been ridiculous. But we were the same age, came from similar backgrounds (his old man was a saloon keeper; mine, a cop), and had something of the same spoiled altar boy’s worldview, and we both worshipped at the dual shrines of the Roundball and the Word.“

In Slate, editor Gerald Howard remembers the late Jim Carroll, best known as author of The Basketball Diaries and the album Catholic Boy. “Tall, slim, athletic, pale, and spectral as many ex-junkies are, Jim was a vivid presence in any setting. He was a classic and now vanishing New York type: the smart (and smartass) Irish kid with style, street savvy, and whatever the Gaelic word for chutzpah is.“

A Hole in the Heart.

“‘This is the part of the brain involved in knowing that you want something,’ she said. ‘When people who are not adjusting well are having these sorts of thoughts about the person, they are experiencing this reward pathway being activated. They really are craving in a way that perhaps is not allowing them or helping them adapt to the new reality.‘” It’s darker than you know in those complicated shadows…A new study finds that unrelenting grief works on the brain differently than the usual kind of post-traumatic depression. “The same brain system is involved in other powerful cravings, such those that afflict drug addicts and alcoholics…It’s like they’re addicted to the happy memories.“

Thirty Months for Ney.

“‘Whether or not you’ve served your constituents well, on some level you have seriously betrayed the public’s trust and abused your power as a congressman,’ Huvelle told Ney. ‘You have a long way to go to make amends for what’s happened.'” Casino Jack flunky and former House GOP poobah Bob Ney gets thirty months in prison for his role in Abramoff’s operation. Ney, meanwhile, is still blaming it on the booze: ““I will continue to take full responsibility for my actions and battle the demons of addiction.” Um, at what point between opening the beer and it touching your lips did taking bribes enter the equation? Save that stuff for Oprah…Most people hopefully realize that Ney’s corruption had less to do with the demon rum than with standard operating procedure under Boss DeLay and the Republicans.

Ground Control to Justice Bill.

Newly released — and somewhat controversial — FBI files, dating from the former Chief Justice’s two confirmation battles in 1971 and 1986, disclose that William Rehnquist battled a painkiller addiction in the early ’80s while serving on the Court. “Doctors interviewed by the FBI told agents that when the associate justice stopped taking the drug, he suffered paranoid delusions. One doctor said Rehnquist thought he heard voices outside his hospital room plotting against him and had ‘bizarre ideas and outrageous thoughts,’ including imagining ‘a CIA plot against him’ and ‘seeming to see the design patterns on the hospital curtains change configuration.’ At one point, a doctor told the investigators, Rehnquist went ‘to the lobby in his pajamas in order to try to escape.’“