Philip Baker Hall

The veteran character actor died on Sunday night “surrounded by loved ones,” tweeted his neighbor, “Los Angeles Times” reporter Sam Farmer.

Hall was raised “in the slums of the north end of Toledo” during the Depression, as the actor told The Washington Post in 2017. Despite his wide range of work, Hall acknowledged he had a particular gift for portraying grim characters. Hall first met Anderson while filming a PBS movie, where Anderson was working as a production assistant. I didn’t know where to start,” Hall told the outlet. The actor’s naivete would give way to a five-decade career, with at least 185 titles on his IMDB page. The world has an empty space in it.”

He appeared in “Secret Honor,” “Boogie Nights,” “Seinfeld” and dozens of other movies and television shows.

In his final film, “The Last Word” (2017), he was the ex-husband of a retired executive (Shirley MacLaine) determined to control her own obituary. He had learned the character types that summoned the best of his gifts — “highly stressed older men,” he said in the Washington Post interview, “who are at the limit of their tolerance for suffering and stress and pain.” In 1973, Mr. Hall married Dianne Lewis. They divorced in 1976, and he married Holly Wolfle in 1981. Even “ Secret Honor,” the one-man Nixon film, began as a stage script, first performed at the Provincetown Playhouse in Manhattan. In “Boogie Nights” (1997), he played a budget-conscious porn-theater magnate. Mr. Hall had small roles in international touring productions with the American Repertory Company, a cultural exchange program. And he was the star of “ Hard Eight” (1996), as a preternaturally calm retired professional gambler who is sincerely trying to help an aimless younger man. It sometimes seemed that Mr. Hall had appeared on every series of his day. The raspy voice, the resigned posture, the world-weary eyes with heavy bags and the thatch of hair that gradually turned white magnified a gravitas that made Mr. Hall’s characters believable, even when audiences knew better. It was, in fact, “one of the last roles I ever auditioned for, simply because so many doors opened up” afterward. In a career of more than 80 films and 200 television appearances, he was often cast as men accustomed to being listened to — doctors, lawyers, generals, detectives, cabinet members, priests and way too many judges. “You never get to walk around.”

Actor Philip Baker Hall, whose career ranged from a scene-stealing stint on 'Seinfeld' to collaborations with director Paul Thomas Anderson, has died.

“He was a fan of my work, so how could I not like him?” Hall said of Anderson in a 2017 interview with the Washington Post. “We would talk and have cigarettes and coffee.” “By the standards of a struggling stage actor, I’ve been doing well.” “It has nothing to do with it, once you’re given the keys to the kingdom.” In the early 1990s, Hall made a pair of memorable appearances as a hard-boiled detective pursuing a 20-years-overdue library book on “Seinfeld,” drawing new fans to his work. “Although Hall never resorts to a cliched impersonation, his suggestion of Nixon’s physiognomy is frequently uncanny, especially in profile.” After building a career on the New York stage, he relocated to Los Angeles and made his big-screen debut with an uncredited role in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 film “Zabriskie Point.”

Hall's many roles included parts in Midnight Run, Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and he was known for one of the most powerfully funny guest ...

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Known for his roles on film and television, Hall has more than 180 screen credits to his name.

Appearing in a short film by aspiring filmmaker named Paul Thomas Anderson, Hall played the character Sydney in Anderson’s 1993 project Cigarettes & Coffee. Anderson loved Hall in Robert Altman’s Secret Honor and met the actor on the set of a PBS movie. Hall’s 1991 appearance is a sterling example of the comedic world Seinfeld and David created as inhabited by an actor so committed to the role that he creates an unflappable logic for something completely ludicrous. Hall’s stern voice and weathered appearance made him a welcome presence throughout his career as he imbued even the most ridiculous situation with a world-weary sincerity. Instead, it opened him up to roles on film and TV, appearing on Modern Family, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and BoJack Horseman, and in movies like Bruce Almighty, Rush Hour, The Insider, and Zodiac. “He seemed about sixteen,” Hall told Esquire. Still, the young director and the seasoned performer struck up a friendship. Bookman became one of the first canonized Seinfeld side characters, proven by his appearance in the show’s final episode, testifying against the main cast. Legendary character actor Philip Baker Hall, known for his regular appearances in the early work of director Paul Thomas Anderson and as the dogged library cop Lt. Joe Bookman on Seinfeld, has died. Soundcore offers a selection of Sound Frames—glasses with built-in speakers that deliver clear, immersive sound to the space around your ears. But it was Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld that gave Hall his big break. Hall’s neighbor, Los Angeles Times reporter Sam Farmer, reported the death on Twitter. Farmer wrote, “My neighbor, friend, and one of the wisest, most talented and kindest people I’ve ever met, Philip Baker Hall, died peacefully last night. The world has an empty space in it.” They’re all starving.” Thankfully, Hall stuck it out, landing roles on hit TV shows like M*A*S*H*, Good Times, and The Waltons. He’d also appear on stage in more than 100 roles—always off-Broadway. It was the Great White Way’s loss.

The late actor Philip Baker Hall played Richard Nixon in the one-man show 'Secret Honor,' which director Robert Altman adapted into a film.

For one, it deepened a young Paul Thomas Anderson’s appreciation for Hall, who eventually did some of his best work in Anderson movies like Hard Eight and Magnolia. And while Altman’s career didn’t fully bounce back until The Player (1992), Secret Honor did help him get some revenge on his haters, according to an anecdote he tells in his director’s commentary. After shortening the play and assembling some of his usual collaborators (including cinematographer Pierre Mignot and his own son, production designer Stephen Altman), the director left the heavy lifting up to Hall, who had already fine-tuned his performance onstage. That approach dates at least as far back as All the President’s Men (1976), which keeps the former president and his cronies offscreen to make the central conspiracy feel even more vast and menacing. Hall seems manically intent on making every line sing, and he succeeds even when asked to bellow, “They did not call me ‘Iron Butt’ in law school for nothing!” Look no further than Secret Honor, Robert Altman’s 1984 film starring the late, great Philip Baker Hall as the former president, which serves as both the definitive onscreen portrayal of Nixon and a monument to Hall’s explosive range as an actor. But he’s too easily parodied, from his folksy yet sinister manner of speaking and (honestly impressive) widow’s peak to the obvious insecurities lurking just beneath his performative slickness.