Philip Seymour Hoffman's voice is a deep, loping rumble that evokes a locomotive chugging steadily along its track. That voice has been used many times as an instrument, tuned to the idiosyncratic frequencies of his various roles: breathy and dulcet as a feisty drag queen in Flawless, fragile and edged with grief as a depressed widower in Love Liza. But it has perhaps never been used more noticeably—or to greater effect—than in the nuanced, fascinating biopic Capote, in which Hoffman plays the famously flamboyant title role. In lesser hands the part of legendary Truman Capote could have been a mere gimmick, but Hoffman fully inhabits the diminutive writer, down to his soft, lilting cadences, which sound almost diametrically opposite from the actor's real-life speaking voice. It's a performance inspiring a good deal of awards buzz, but the actor initially balked at taking on the role. "I just wasn't sure if I was the right guy for the part, really," admits Hoffman, clad in a natty plaid shirt and looking nothing like his onscreen persona. "It's such a difficult role for anybody to play, and I thought, 'You really want to get the right guy.'" Hoffman's old friends Dan Futterman, who penned the script, and Bennett Miller, who directed, were already convinced Hoffman was the right guy. "He was my only choice," Miller says simply. Hoffman was ultimately convinced by a letter from Futterman. "Danny wrote me this great letter, basically saying, 'What else do we want…other than three old friends [making] a film together?' He's right, and it was a very good script."
Hoffman also signed on to executive-produce the film through Cooper's Town Productions, the fledgling production company he formed with former assistant Emily Ziff. "This is the first film that we've been involved with," says Hoffman. "We said, 'Why don't we take it on? We don't have any money, but we can take it on and help try to get money.'"
He became very involved in seeking out funding for Capote, pitching the film to potential financers. "He was going to all the meetings to try to raise money for the movie, talking about his passion for it…" recalls Futterman. "He doesn't loosely attach himself to things. When he gets interested, he gets interested." The project secured support from Infinity Media, which partnered with United Artists to produce the film. United Artists and Sony Pictures Classics distributed the finished product, which had a budget of around $7 million.
Capote, which is based on the biography by Gerald Clarke, doesn't fall into standard biopic format of spanning the decades of the subject's life. Rather it focuses on the years it took the writer to pen his masterpiece In Cold Blood, a true-crime tome about killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. The film examines Capote's tortured process and conflicting motivations, as well as his complicated relationship with Smith. "At the end of the day it's about Truman Capote, but it's not," says Hoffman. "It really isn't. It's a thematically driven movie. It's five and a half years out of this guy's life to tell a tale that brings up questions about a lot of things: celebrity, journalism, is great art worth it? Is the price of what that is worth it? On and on and on, all these things that get brought up that happen to do with a true tale about Truman Capote."
When it came time to step into the role, Hoffman dug into the research. He knew who Capote was and remembered seeing the writer on talk shows, but he wasn't well-read on Capote's life and had no preconceptions about him. "There [were] technical things I had to deal with—the way he spoke and behaved and stuff," says Hoffman. "I had audiotapes and videotapes, and I talked to people. And then the internal stuff was really just a lot of reading and a lot of talking and a lot of exploring and seeing what it was that kind of made him tick. What [was] the thing that drove him compulsively through this event? What was his obsession?"
Hoffman also had to contend with the disparity in physical type. "We had to create some illusion of him being how small he was," says Hoffman. "I'm not a big guy, but I'm not a small guy. [I'm] almost 5-foot-10; I'm a broad-shouldered guy. So I knew I would have to get any extra weight off and not do any pushups or anything—just kind of let my muscles go where they were going to go and get as small-looking as possible. And then be fitted in my wardrobe in such a way that [would] really accentuate my size, which was as small as I could be, to create that illusion. Then anyone around me, we'd just make sure there [was] no one shorter than me around me at any time. Someone could be my height or taller. You didn't have to make people believe that he's 5-foot-3, but you had to create the illusion that he's always one of if not the smallest person in the room."
One of Hoffman's most searing scenes comes toward the end of the film, when Capote has a final meeting with Smith and Hickock and can't hold back his tears. Miller, however, noted Hoffman said beforehand that he wasn't going to cry for the scene. "The scene's not about crying, so I didn't really care to talk about crying, because it's not really interesting," says Hoffman. "That's an acting stunt: You cry. So I was really combating talking about that issue. It's, like, 'Well, I don't want to do that.' It was kind of me, the actor, saying it might not be played that way. And I really did believe that. But I had to create the event and personalize it in such a way, and then…in playing the scene, it's a byproduct of what the scene's about and what's going on."
And how was working so closely with an old friend such as Miller, whom he has known since they were 16 years old? "It was very exposing…. You can't really hide much," Hoffman says. "You've got to suck and fail in front of them and fall down and get back up. That's hard to do in front of people you've known for a long time, because you want to look like you've got it together or something. But, at the end of the day, it was a good thing because it was a very difficult process, and it was very difficult on us, and I think the fact that we knew each other a long time, there was a lot of understanding, compassion, and forgiving. It wasn't a set of niceties and compliments; it was a set of a lot of truth, and sometimes that truth wasn't so pleasant."
Luckily, Hoffman and Miller often agreed on what was good enough to make the cut; they had to be very discerning, considering how specific the material was. "There [are] some roles where you might not be getting it just right, but it's easier to get in the ballpark," says Hoffman. "Here it's, like, if you weren't right, you were wrong…. As a producer, I got all the dailies, and I'd be, like, 'Okay, there's one take from yesterday that's usable in that scene.' [Bennett would] be, like, 'Really?' I'd say, 'Yeah, Take Eight.' And he would go look at it and [say], 'Yeah.' Or sometimes he'd be, like, 'Yeah, only half of that one, actually.'"
Next, Hoffman takes on an entirely different sort of part: a villain in big-budget action flick Mission: Impossible III, directed by TV whiz J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias). The actor is also excited to produce more films—particularly projects he isn't also acting in. "Acting is a very self-centered thing, and I don't mean that in a negative way, because I don't think thinking about yourself is a bad thing," he says. "But it's about looking inward all the time…. And when you're a producer or director, you're concerned with the whole [project] all the time and everybody involved. You get out of yourself in a way that's very healthy, and it's a good thing to balance. I think that's why you see a lot of actors trying to do other things. I really think it comes from that place—the desire as a human being just to want to exercise a different part of you, which you know will be healthy, will allow you to go back to acting and balance those things out."
Meanwhile he couldn't be happier with the warm reception for Capote. "When we started out, we really didn't have anything," he says. "We didn't have any money, we didn't have a studio. So the fact that it actually got made was, to me, a huge deal. And the fact that it's getting the reception it's getting is way beyond what any of us [expected]. I know a lot of people say that kind of thing, but it's really true. We really thought, 'Boy, we could make this thing, and [it] could go away on video.' The level of difficulty was very high; it was easy to screw up, and we knew that. So the fact that people are talking about it that way is just a sign that a lot of people out there seem to be liking it. That's just a huge plus."