Famous deaths invite hyperbole. The news that Philip Seymour Hoffman was discovered dead today in an apartment bathroom, with a syringe sticking out of his arm, seems like an occasion to overreact with some exaggerated summary of his career—something like "most talented and kaleidoscopic actor of his time."

Except, in this case, the compliment isn't hyperbolic at all. It's just an accurate description, as true yesterday as it is today. And the competition isn't even that close.

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Daniel Day-Lewis, the most decorated male actor of his time, has astonished as America's most famous president and most ruthless fictional oil titan. But he excels at playing superlatives—at commanding the aristocratic awe of characters who are bigger than life. Day-Lewis playing a game of pick-up basketball in a romantic comedy isn't a movie scene. It's a discarded SNL skit. It's a bad joke. He would never do it, and nobody would ever want to see it. Hoffman was different. He could puff himself up and play larger than life, but his specialty was to find the quiet dignity in life-sized characters—losers, outcasts, and human marginalia.

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