Hoffman was in a relationship with costume designer Mimi O’Donnell for the last 15 years of his life. They met while working on the 1999 play In Arabia We’d All Be Kings, which Hoffman directed. They had a son, born in 2003, and two daughters; one born in 2006 and the other born in 2008.
Hoffman stood 5’10” tall. The New York Times described Hoffman as “a stocky, often sleepy-looking man with blond, generally uncombed hair who favored the rumpled clothes more associated with an out-of-work actor than a star.” Hoffman “frequently dyed his hair and lost or gained weight for parts” and “was known for a sometimes painful dedication to his craft.”
In a 2006 interview, Hoffman revealed that he had suffered from drug and alcohol abuse after graduating from college, and went to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction, recovering at age 22. He said he had abused “anything I could get my hands on. I liked it all.”Hoffman relapsed over 20 years later, checking into a rehabilitation program for about 10 days in May 2013 because of problems with prescription pills and heroin.
On February 2, 2014, Hoffman was found dead at the age of 46 by his friend, playwright and screenwriter David Bar Katz, in the bathroom of Hoffman’s West Village, Manhattan office apartment. According to the New York City Police Department, the death was from an apparent drug overdose. Investigators found a large quantity of heroin and a number of prescription drugs in his apartment.
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