Philip Baker Hall, the prolific character actor of film and theater who starred in Paul Thomas Anderson’s first movies and who memorably hunted down a long-overdue library book in “Seinfeld,” has died. He was 90.
Hall made an impression in small roles in other films, like 1988's “Midnight Run." But outside of theater, Hall was mostly doing guest roles in television. That changed when he was shooting a PBS program in 1992. Hall then encountered a production assistant in his early 20s named Paul Thomas Anderson. The two would hang out, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee between scenes.
After the $20,000 short made it into the Sundance Film Festival, Anderson expanded it into his feature debut, 1997's “Hard Eight,” which catapulted Hall's career. In it, Hall played a wise and courteous itinerate gambler named Sydney who schools a young drifter on the craft. In one indelible scene, Philip Seymour Hoffman's first with Anderson, a hot-shot gambler chides Hall as “old-timer.
“I have a particular fascination with character actors, with wanting to turn them into lead actors," Anderson ."I see Philip Baker Hall, he’s just . . . an actor that I love. There’s no one else with a face like that, or a voice like that.” Hall was brought back for the “Seinfeld” finale and by Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” David once said no other actor ever made him laugh more than Hall.
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