An actor’s life: a Philip Seymour Hoffman infographic

DG’s Art Director Christian Tate describes the making of one of his favourite infographics of the latest issue – our tribute to Philip Seymour Hoffman.

“For this issue we wanted to create an infographic based around Philip Seymour Hoffman’s filmography. We had a look at the full list of his films and two things that stood out were the variety of genres he had worked in and the commercial range he spanned, between art-house independent movies and the biggest of blockbusters.

We decided to plot his film career as a timeline of critical and commercial success, showing every film, its genre, box office take and critical reception. There were a few films for which the data was unavailable (including those yet to be released) and I filled these gaps with an average score. 

What I hoped would appear was an almost geological pattern showing rich seams of comedy/drama/action etc and spikes of box office gold for certain genres.

I was surprised that Hoffman almost never worked with the same director twice, and when he did it was a five-time collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson which I thought was worth highlighting along with his five appearances alongside Julianne Moore as his favourite co-star.

Hopefully the results give a brief insight into the finest character actor of our time.”

Check ‘An actor’s life’ and many more infographics in issue #14 of Delayed Gratification. You can buy the issue in the DG shop.

Posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2014 - Categories: Delayed Gratification magazine, From the team.