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Conoisseurs of indie films will know Philip Seymour Hoffman's face, but they may not know his name. I remember his red hair, affable smile, and stocky figure from Nobody's Fool, but he was probably more widely seen in 1997's Boogie Nights playing Scotty, the gay porn film crew hand with the crush on Mark Wahlberg's Dirk Diggler.

1998 was a real banner year for Hoffman, with three significant yet vastly different roles. In The Big Lebowski, directed by the Coen brothers, he played an officious personal assistant to wheelchair-bound millionaire Jeff Lebowski, played by fellow Hey! It's That Guy! David Huddleston. In Next Stop, Wonderland, Hoffman played the political activist boyfriend whose dumping of protagonist Erin (Hope Davis) by videotape catalyzes the film's plot. He appeared as Allen, the obscene phone caller in Happiness. Creepier yet, he turned up in the Robin Williams vehicle Patch Adams.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is enough of a chameleon that it's hard to pin him down to a single signature role, which is the hallmark of a great Hey! It's That Guy! He is among the generation of young, up-and-coming Hey, It's That Guy!s for the millennium and, let's face it, will never be a leading man because he's identified himself as a man with three names. If he were Philip S. Hoffman he could at least aspire to Samuel L. Jackson status. Better to embrace the niche, says Fametracker.