The real Truman show

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Capote is hot favourite for Best Actor Oscar.

10 April 2012

While most actors use their acceptance speeches to thank their mothers, their brothers and anyone else who knows them, after receiving his Golden Globe this week for his dazzling turn as Truman Capote, Philip Seymour Hoffman used his moment to pay tribute to "the role of a lifetime".

Actors long for the challenge of a part as colourful as the flamboyant gay writer and socialite. Though he died 20 years ago, in 1984, Capote's pudgy face, black-rimmed glasses and camp, strangled voice are unforgettable.

"I was terrified to start with," Hoffman told me before the awards, "because you don't want to mimic him, you don't want to just do a stunt, because the story is the important thing, so I knew that if I served the story, the character would come alive. I knew that when you were watching it, you had to be moved by the story."

And what a story. The film, Capote, directed by Bennett Miller, is no yearby-year biopic but a desperately compelling chronicle of how the writer broke every rule of journalism while working on his classic 1966 "nonfiction" novel, In Cold Blood.

Capote's early short stories earned him a literary reputation, but it wasn't until 1948 that he found a wider audience with his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story of an Alabama boy that drew prurient interest and controversy for its treatment of homosexuality.

But Capote remained of niche interest for another 10 years, until his breakthrough novel, Breakfast at Tiffany's, which was soon made into the film with Audrey Hepburn. (Capote hated it, announcing that Marilyn Monroe would have been a better Holly Golightly.)

Famous for being outspoken, brilliant and bitchy, he was unapologetically gay and a well-known figure on the New York social scene. He increasingly turned to journalism, sometimes blending it with fiction, and alienated most of his friends in his final years when he published the first few chapters of his proposed kiss-and-tell exposé of New York society, Answered Prayers. He never finished it, however, and died at the age of 59 awash with booze and drugs.

The film suggests that this downward slide began during the six-year period it took for him to write In Cold Blood, which, in chilling detail, told the story of the purposeless slaughter of a rural Kansas family in 1959, the subsequent capture of the suspected killers - two drifters called Dick Hickock and Perry Smith - their convictions and executions in 1965.

The film also shows how Capote put himself in the story, making contact with Smith in prison, becoming fascinated and perhaps falling in love with him. While Smith languished in jail, filing appeals for stays of execution - some financed by Capote himself - he came to rely on the writer, who in turn, needed Smith to confess to the crimes so he could complete his book.

Whichever way you look at it, Capote compromised his integrity either for the sake of a good story or out of romantic desire for his subject. "It's clear that Smith and Hickock are not good guys," Hoffman says, "but ultimately the story is about the fact that somebody who wasn't in [that Kansas] house that day commits a crime - a crime of the heart or a crime of the mind."

Capote is the crowning film for Hoffman, 38, the king of American indie cinema. A sports fanatic as a teenager, he became interested in theatre when a neck injury cut short his wrestling career.

While maintaining a vital presence on the New York stage, he has built his film career on some of the most daring roles. In Boogie Nights he played Scotty, the crew member with a crush on porno actor Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), and took memorable supporting roles in The Big Lebowski, Happiness (as an obscene phone caller with a penchant for masturbation), Magnolia and Flawless (as a pre-op transsexual).

His roles in bigger Hollywood titles have been just as quirky: in The Talented Mr Ripley (as the odious Freddie Miles), Almost Famous (playing a rock writer), Red Dragon and Cold Mountain.

Capote is another independent movie, already packing out arthouses and frustrating Hollywood bigwigs by attracting more award action than their big-budget King Kongs or Munichs. Its success can only increase now that Hoffman has his Globe, making him a hot favourite for the Oscars on 5 March.

He is fascinating to watch. With Capote's trademark slicked-back yellow hair, thick glasses and colourful costume, Hoffman invests his character with all the campness required - from lispy voice to fey mannerisms - while also capturing the fierce intelligence and quiet ruthlessness of the man. It's a disquietingly convincing portrait of an artist out to finish his masterpiece without concern for anyone around him.

"There's a wonderful scene in the film," Hoffman says, "when Capote sees Perry Smith for the first time and it's like atrigger goes off. From that moment on, a tragedy is set in motion. Truman's attraction, fascination, obsession, started there. Perry was a mysterious individual, who had a troubled past, rather like Truman, who was damaged goods. Truman was fascinated from the get-go and couldn't help himself from getting as close as possible.

"But I don't think it was about a little grab-ass in the Death Row jail cell kind of stuff. I think it was about Truman getting some love and wanting more love - about him wanting not only admiration for himself as a writer but the love of Perry Smith as well."

Hoffman is far from ugly, but he's unkempt to the point of scruffy, has a gruff voice which speaks of countless cigarettes smoked and, as we have seen on screen, his weight fluctuates wildly. He's intense, but only when talking about Capote, and, refreshingly, is unpretentious when he talks about acting.

Disconnecting is really easy," he says. " During the day, between shots, I'd try and stay in a certain place vocally and physically so I wouldn't have to bring it back up. But at the end of the day it was nice to go home and let my shoulders drop."

He did, he says, struggle with the fact that, while he stands at 5ft 9in, Capote was six inches shorter. "I had to get small. When they offered me the role, I was really big. My girlfriend was pregnant and we both got huge together, so I was like 240 million pounds. I was this roly-poly guy. I got as thin as I could and I have a fleshy face, which is fine because [Truman] had a very fleshy face."

The success of this film must be galling for the team behind another film on the same subject, due for release later on this year. Called Infamous, it stars English stage actor Toby Jones as Capote, with Daniel Craig as Perry and a glittering supporting cast (including Gywneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini and Jeff Daniels).

Hoffman says he hasn't read the script for the rival project, which reportedly suggests that Capote and Smith had a physical relationship in Smith's cell.

Either way, Hoffman's Capote is a tough act for Jones to follow. Certainly Hoffman is riding high as 2006 begins. He has a successful relationship with girlfriend Mimi O'Donnell; his son, Cooper, is now two-and-a-half years old, and he is collecting awards for Capote on a weekly basis. That's not to mention a starring role opposite Tom Cruise in this summer's hottest blockbuster Mission:Impossible III.

"I feel pretty good right this moment," Hoffman admits, "but there's a lesson in Capote about needing to be accepted and needing to know that what you've done is worth it. I think those things are not satiable. We want to be accepted and admired, but I'm realistic because I don't think that is a hole that is ever filled. I think what's moving about this film is that you see somebody destroyed by that very thing."

Capote opens on 24 February.

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