Summary

• Philip Seymour Hoffman's compassion and presence as an actor deeply impacted co-stars like Julianne Moore in "Magnolia."
• Hoffman's legacy lives on through his acclaimed performances, including in "Boogie Nights" and "The Hunger Games" series.
• Moore reflects on the pressures and expectations of winning an Oscar, highlighting the absurdity of declaring a performance "the best."

Academy Award winner Julianne Moore has reflected on what it was like working with the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. During an appearance on SiriusXM’s “This Life of Mine with James Corden,” Moore heaped praise on her Magnolia co-star, paying tribute to his compassion, patience, love, and presence.

"He was amazing. In “Magnolia” too, he was filled with so much compassion and patience and love and presence, and he was somebody who cared very very deeply about his work and I think about what it meant to people and how to kind of hold it all, right? How to hold what he was doing, how to hold what the other actor was doing, how to incorporate, I don’t know. He was a very special actor I think and you could feel his humanity when you worked with him. You could feel his presence and his depth of feeling and his sensitivity. He was extraordinarily sensitive and Jason Robards at the time was older and was not particularly well, and so it was a strange concoction of characters and actions in that room, you know?”

Hoffman, who was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar three times and won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in 2006’s Capote, stars as part of a large ensemble cast alongside Moore in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 drama, Magnolia. Told as a cinematic mosaic, the critically acclaimed Magnolia details the story of dysfunctional families and each member’s search for happiness and meaning. The rest of the cast includes Jeremy Blackman, Tom Cruise, Melinda Dillon, Philip Baker Hall, Ricky Jay, William H. Macy, Alfred Molina, John C. Reilly, Jason Robards, and Melora Walters.

One of the most celebrated actors of all time thanks to his roles in the likes of Boogie Nights, Happiness, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Hunger Games series, Almost Famous, The Master, Doubt, and more, Philip Seymour Hoffman sadly passed away from a drug overdose on February 2, 2014, at the age of just 46.

Julianne Moore Reflects on the Pressure of Winning an Oscar

During the interview, Moore also reflected on her experience of winning the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in the 2014 drama Still Alice, which finds the actress playing a linguistics professor who is diagnosed with Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease.

“You know what was hardest? Being by myself. At the beginning, Kristen was there a lot for things. There were a couple of events that we did together and I was so grateful. I just love her, Kristen Stewart, so much, but then a lot of the stuff I was doing, I was by myself and we didn't have anybody else from the film who was, sometimes films have a lot of people nominated, and so you kind of go in a little posse, but usually it was just me and I’d end up at somebody else’s table and they’re like, “Oh, here’s the odd man out,” or whatever, and that was hard and there is that feeling of like, I don’t know. It sounds so crazy. The expectation, I guess, you know, when that kind of-”

Corden then highlighted the pressure of winning and taking to the stage to make a speech, with Moore revealing what was said to her on the night that made things even worse...

"Right? I know, it’s crazy and I remember too, you know it was really funny. Because I won everything throughout the season, which was really incredible and hard to believe for me, I got to the Oscars and it’s a long season and you're sitting there and somebody came over to me and they said, “You’re gonna win tonight or else it’s gonna be the biggest upset in Oscar history.

I know, but then I went, “Oh, I could be the biggest upset. I could be the biggest upset.” You’re just sitting there thinking, “This is crazy,” but also it’s just a silly thing, right?”

Finally, asked by Corden “How can there be such a thing as best?” Moore replied...

"There isn’t and there isn’t such a thing as best.”

New episodes of SiriusXM’s “This Life of Mine with James Corden” air Thursdays on Stars (ch. 109) and on the SiriusXM app.