( CNN ) -- There was no one else like him , certainly not in our time , likely not ever . Is this an overstatement ? Put it this way : How would you ever typecast Philip Seymour Hoffman ? Gangster ? Priest ? Cop ? Super villain ? Spy ? Schoolteacher ? Sybarite ? Vagrant ? A president of the United States ? Let 's put it another way : Who could you imagine doing all these things in ways that no one else had done before ? Just so . No one . Hoffman , who was found dead at 46 of an apparent drug overdose Sunday , had at one time or another played some of those above-mentioned roles and did with an open-hearted incisiveness that unsettled presumptions and awakened possibilities . When Hoffman was onscreen , you knew you were going to see a kind of person who , while you may not have personally encountered in real life , you acknowledged as a plausible human being , no matter how quirky or disorienting his personality . Whether he was playing the manipulative , abusive , but emotionally needy cult leader in 2012 's `` The Master '' ( to these eyes , his finest big-screen performance ) , a crusty , disheveled but faintly idealistic CIA operator in 2007 's `` Charlie Wilson 's War '' or a pampered , egocentric but observant rich boy in 1999 's `` The Talented Mr. Ripley , '' Hoffman layered his technical skills with compassion , insight and sense of risk . Those skills were not inconsiderable . He packed a resonant voice that could vault several octaves above its normal deep-dyed wooly tone . ( Look no further than his Oscar-winning performance in the title role of 2005 's `` Capote . '' ) 5 reasons we loved Philip Seymour Hoffman . He exercised a meticulous sense of detail , lightly tailored for each role , no matter how ludicrous ( `` Mission : Impossible III 's '' grimy , wealthy and sadistic bad-guy-in-charge ) or familiar ( `` Moneyball 's '' blustery , seen-it-all team manager ) . His was the kind of versatility commonly associated with the character actor more than with the movie star . Yet it was Hoffman 's broad range and penetrating compassion that made him , if not a star , a reliable brand name for movies that aimed higher than commercial cinema usually bothered . You looked forward to seeing Hoffman 's name in the credits , if only to see what kind of weirdness was in store . It was n't apparent at first how far and how fast Hoffman 's oddly configured star would rise . Depending on how long you 'd been going to the movies , you might have first noticed him as the petulant , trigger-happy small-town policeman in 1994 's `` Nobody 's Fool '' or as the swaggering , borderline-deranged craps player in 1996 's `` Hard Eight . '' Neither of these performances prepared you for his sweet , out-of-left-field portrayal of Scotty J , a gay , grubby-puppy production assistant for a porn-movie outfit in 1997 's `` Boogie Nights . '' After a while , the only thing you expected from Hoffman was the unexpected . He gave a persuasive , tender rendering in 2000 's `` Almost Famous '' of the ill-fated rock critic Lester Bangs ( whose premature drug-related death , not depicted in the film , deepens the poignancy of Hoffman 's own ) . A succession of misfits , screw-ups , neurotics , thwarted dreamers and self-deluded narcissists followed offset by such complicated , intriguing characters as the tormented visionary theater director Caden Cotard in 2008 's `` Synecdoche , New York . '' Cotard is one of the few characters in Hoffman 's curriculum vitae whose massive urges for sex , adulation and control are sated , but whose more cosmic yearnings remain unfulfilled . Even when not playing someone clinging to life 's margins , Hoffman played his own worst enemy . Perhaps that 's what endeared him to us the most , this unlikely icon of craftsmanship whose physical presence called to mind how Dorothy Parker once described James Thurber 's cartoon characters : Having the `` outer semblance of unbaked cookies . '' From this loose , somewhat baggy set of physical attributes , Hoffman sculpted vivid depictions of the human heart at its most besieged and overwhelmed . The effort he put into these renderings showed he cared about the unlucky , the awkward and ( despite it all ) the most dauntless among us . Is all this overstatement ? Only if you can think of anyone else who will carry on in his absence . And I 'm stumped ... and sad . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gene Seymour .
Gene Seymour : The first thing I noticed was that the water in my glass of ice tea had a very distinct taste to it. He did n't play a certain kind of role but had astonishing range , he says . Seymour says the actor made you wonder what he would have in store . He says Hoffman 's acting vividly sketched the lives of people who are besieged and unlucky .