American actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was BOTD in 1967. Born in Fairport, New York, he and his siblings were raised by their mother after his parents’ divorce. He became interested in theatre in high school, studying acting at the Tisch School of the Arts. After working in theatre in New York and Chicago, he began appearing in films, making his first notable appearance as a jerkish frat boy in Scent of a Woman. He dominated 1990s independent cinema with a series of vivid scene-stealing performances. Though avowedly heterosexual, he excelled at playing sexual perverts, lowlifes and outcasts. His gallery of misfits included a closeted gay cameraman in Boogie Nights, the first of several collaborations with filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson; a suicidal accountant who makes obscene phone calls in Todd Solondz‘s controversial black comedy Happiness; and a trans woman who teaches Robert de Niro to sing in Flawless. In Anthony Minghella’s 1999 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith‘s novel The Talented Mr Ripley, he played the definitive Freddie Miles, an obnoxious frat boy who cruelly taunts the closeted gay Ripley about his attraction to Dickie Greenleaf. After seeing his performance, Meryl Streep commented “This actor is fearless…. He’s given this awful character the respect he deserves, and made him fascinating.” In the 2000s, he transitioned to leading man roles, winning an Oscar for his brittle, morally ambiguous portrayal of Truman Capote in the 2005 biopic Capote. He brought similar ambiguity to the role of a priest accused of pedophilia in Doubt co-starring Streep, and played a charismatic cult leader in Anderson’s pseudo-Scientology drama The Master. A distinguished stage actor, he had success in Broadway revivals of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night and Mike Nichols‘ celebrated 2012 production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Hoffman married his long-term partner Mimi O’Donnell in 1999, with whom he had three children. He struggled with addiction for most of his adult life, dying of an accidental drug overdose in 2014, aged 46. Now hailed as one of the greatest American actors of his generation, he earns Honorary SuperGay status for embodying his many queer characters with compassion and astonishing intensity.