I can’t sleep. I’m inconsolable.

I’m not usually this affected by “celebrity deaths”.

I didn’t know him, but I adored and was in awe of his work, his talent. I had a crush as big as the size of him. He was beautiful.

I didn’t know him, but perhaps I recognised his self-loathing. Perhaps I loved that.

For a while, last year, I wanted to meet him. That rarely happens to me. I don’t even want to meet musicians I like, let alone actors. But Philip Seymour Hoffman, or rather my obsession with him, kept me company in the months that I was unemployed last year. Every film I could get my hands on. It was a thing of beauty in barren times: his painful, torturous, transcendent pieces of, well, I can’t even call it ‘acting’.

Lots of actors act. Some do it badly. Some are good. But Hoffman didn’t act, he just was. His complete transformations baffled me every time. You couldn’t see the seams. The amount of work he must have put into making it seem so effortless… Admirable. Insane.

He was peerless, but everybody in the business seemed to know he was troubled. Since last year’s revelations, it was clear he wasn’t well. And so I was selfishly afraid this would happen before I had the chance to see him on stage. Which was the plan. To fly to New York to catch him on Broadway, next time. To see beauty in the flesh.

What a fucking shame. What a loss for the arts. For his three young children. For his partner.

I didn’t know him.