The everyday actor racked up more than 100 television appearances during his five-decade career, and one of his most endearing characters in recent times was Walt Kleezak, the cantankerous neighbor who befriends young Luke Dunphy (Nolan Gould) in modern-family.
Hall played Richard Nixon in the play Secret Honor, then reprized the role of the disgraced president for the director Robert Altman in a 1984 film version. He also played 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt in The Insider (1999) of Michael Mann and had the unique distinction of appearing in two films about a notorious 1960s serial killer: Zodiac (2005) and Zodiac (2007).
Regarding his relationship with Paul Thomas Anderson, they first met on a PBS movie when the director was working as a production assistant. “He was a fan of my work, so how could I not like it?” Hall said with a laugh during an April 2017 interview with The Washington Post. “We talked and had cigarettes and coffee.”
Those conversations made a big impression on Anderson, who wrote a screenplay for a film that became his 1993 short film, aptly titled Cigarettes & Coffeestarring Hall.
For his first feature film, Hard Eight (1996), Anderson introduced Hall as Sydney, a veteran card swindler who teaches the tricks of his trade to a younger protégé (J.Ohn C Reilly).
“Philip Baker Hall has been in the movies since 1975 and has been in many TV shows, including Seinfeld. “He’s familiar, in a way: he looks middle-aged and a little sad. And grown up,” he wrote. Roger Ebert in his review of the film. “Many Americans are late in their teens, but Hall is the kind of guy who puts on a tie before he leaves the house.
“He gave one of the great performances in American cinema, in a one-man show, playing Richard Nixon in Robert Altman’s Secret Honor. Here’s another great performance. He is a man who has been around, who knows casinos and gambling, who finds himself attached to three people he could have easily avoided, who he thinks about before he acts.”
In boogie nights in Anderson, the sweeping 1997 drama about the porn industry, Hall played adult film distributor Floyd Gondolli. And his moving performance as Jimmy Gator, the host of a children’s game show who dies of cancer, was one of the highlights of the acclaimed Magnolia (1999) from the director.
Still, Hall’s most recognizable role came in the episode of Seinfeld “Library”. A headstrong detective in a trench coat, his Joe Bookman relentlessly pursued Jerry in search of a library book, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, that was over 20 years out of date. Hall’s surrender without taking any prisoners lent the perfect sense of absurdity to the situation.
“You better not mess up again, Seinfeld, because if you do, I’ll be on top of you like a pit bull on a poodle,” Bookman warns Jerry. The performance endeared the actor to the legion of Seinfeld fans.
Bookman made a return visit at the end of the legendary sitcom that aired on May 14, 1998.
Philip Baker Hall was born on September 10, 1931 in Toledo, Ohio. He attended the University of Toledo and enlisted in the Army, serving as an Army translator in Germany. Hall always had a penchant for acting, but he was initially hesitant to pursue such a risky career. Instead, after leaving the Army, he returned to Ohio and worked as a radio host and high school teacher.
Source: Ambito
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