BlackTree TV covers The 80th Annual Academy Awards

Best Supporting Actor

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Film and stage actor and theater director Philip Seymour Hoffman was born in the Rochester, New York, suburb of Fairport on July 23, 1967. After becoming involved in high school theatrics, he attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating with a B.F.A. degree in Drama in 1989. He made his feature film debut in the indie production Triple Bogey on a Par Five Hole (1991) as Phil Hoffman, and his first role in a major release came the next year in My New Gun (1992).

The Other Nominees

Casey Affleck

Javier Bardem

Hal Holbrook

Tom Wilkinson

Charlie Wilson's War

In the early 1980s, Charlie Wilson is a womanizing US congressional representative from Texas who seemed to be in the minor leagues, except for the fact that he is a member of two major foreign policy and covert-ops committees. However, prodded by his major conservative supporter, Joanne Herring, Wilson learns about the plight of the people are suffering in the brutal Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. With the help of the maverick CIA agent, Gust Avrakotos, Wilson dedicates his canny political efforts to supply the Afghan mujahideen with the weapons and support to defeat the Soviet Union. However, Charlie Wilson eventually learns that while military victory can had, there are other consequences and prices to that fight that are ignored to everyone's sorrow.

Cast

• Tom Hanks
• Amy Adams
• Julia Roberts
• Brian Markinson
• Philip Seymour Hoffman
• Terry Bozeman
• Brian Markinson
• Jud Tylor
• Hilary Angelo
• Cyia Batten

Production Team

• Directed by Mike Nichols
• Written by Aaron Sorkin