Philip Seymour Hoffman's Sister Remembers Late Actor in Touching Essay 10 Years After His Death

In an essay published by The Paris Review on Monday, Hoffman's sister, Emily Barr, paid tribute to the Oscar winner, who passed away from a heroin overdose in 2014 at the age of 46. Barr opened up about their relationship growing up, her brother's love of reading and film, and of course, Hoffman's iconic career and legacy.

"I could swear that Phil based much of his acting technique on watching Gene Wilder scenes like this over and over as a kid," she wrote. "The physical comedy is subtle in that the main character is unaware of his buffoonery -- only the audience is in on the joke. Phil did this a lot: we would know that something was up, but the character himself was often clueless."

"This was true both of Phil’s comedic scenes and more dramatic ones," she continued, before referencing some of her brother's most famous roles. "Sandy Lyle sharting at the party in Along Came Polly, Scotty J. trying to kiss Mark Wahlberg's character in Boogie Nights, and the CIA agent Gust Avrakotos smashing the window in Charlie Wilson's War. All three characters possess the same loud, obnoxious physicality."

"And then you see it in more nuanced ways, like when the brother in The Savages sneaks a cookie before the support group meeting is over, or when Freddie Miles plucks the piano keys in The Talented Mr. Ripley, or when Truman Capote takes tiny bites from the baby-food jars in Capote," she added. "

"These gestures brought his characters to life, and made us empathize and identify with their excitement, embarrassment, anger, and heartache," Barr said, adding, "Even now, when I watch Phil playing these parts in films that now capture a distant past, in roles that have become familiar to us, I can see so much of who he was."

Barr, a pediatric nurse practitioner, said her brother "was a cuddly person, much more so than me," writing that he "loved to sit close on a couch, walk arm in arm down the street, and hug big."

She said Hoffman "had a lot of loud parts," including "his laughter and big gestures of annoyance."

"The way he would jump up and dance around when teasing you -- even after you’d pleaded for him to stop, he just couldn’t help poking fun one last time," Barr wrote. "He knew it was wrong, but he was going to do it anyway, and laugh until you were laughing too. And then do it again, until you weren't laughing, because we Hoffmans are not good at knowing how to stop. We know when to stop, we can tell the mood has shifted, but we always take things one step too far."

In her essay, Barr discussed her and her brother's love of reading, and how they would visit their local public library in Rochester, New York, where they grew up. She wrote that she visited the Rochester Public Library in the wake of Hoffman's death, and "scoured the library shelves for every periodical that even mentioned him."

"Here were the final magazine stories detailing his life cut short. At first, I just wanted to be sure I collected all the glowing obituaries reviewing the life and unexpected death of this talented young actor who mesmerized us with his art," Barr explained. "But then I became obsessive. Even the weekly TV Guide put his name in the crossword: 15 down, twenty letters, 'Oscar overdose.' I added it to my pile."

She said the librarian told her that the magazines will get "cut up by little kids" or "recycled." When Barr asked if "someone wanted to keep them when the library was done with them," the library told her, "We can't do that. It’s just too hard to keep track of requests like this."

Barr said she took matters into her own hands. While she wrote that she didn't want to read the articles about her late brother herself, she "didn't want children cutting them up in class next year."

"More importantly, I didn't want one of my children to be sitting in art class and get handed one of these magazines and open it up to see their uncle Phil," she added.

Barr shared that she checked out all of the magazines, took them home, and "sat on the floor and cut all the articles and photos of Phil out of each magazine." She then "tucked all of the clippings into an old cigar box," and "returned the cut-up magazines to the library, slipping them into the book deposit slot and hoping the cameras wouldn't catch" her.

While walking home from the library, Barr thought about what her brother would think about what she did.

"Phil would think I was ridiculous for doing all this," she wrote. "He'd wrap his big arm around me, and we would walk a little quicker as the temperature dropped and the sun set lower in the sky."

"We would talk, like when we were kids, imagining the story of Encyclopedia Brown trying to solve The Case of the Vanishing Actor, which takes place in a library with a small wooden door," she concluded.

Read Barr's full tribute, here.

Hoffman passed away on February 2, 2014. He was 46. In addition to Barr, he is also survived by his sister, Emily, his partner, Mimi O'Donnell, and their three children: Cooper, Tallulah, and Willa.