Whenever there was a movie with him in it, I wanted to see it, no matter what size role he played. I never could remember his name so always called him, “You know, that guy with the three names. Played Capote, remember?” And someone always did.

Now he’s gone and it is such an awful loss to all of us, to his large family, his three kids, his partner, to the motion picture industry, to the stage. To his audiences. Philip Seymour Hoffman was the best actor ever, and do I know of such things? No, I do not. But I know when he was up there on the screen, he was the one we watched no matter who else was in the scene. He was Everyman, a frumpled, overweight, balding, unshaven, messy bag of laundry, but when he acted none of that mattered, and if it did, it didn’t matter.

I did not personally know the great actor with three names, but I am enraged at him anyway. He and so many others. What is the deal with these so called professionals, anyway? I just don’t get it. They struggle and work so hard for that ethereal, always out of reach Big Break, they search and search for the audience and finally, like a great jigsaw puzzle floating about in the ethers, it all clicks together for them, and they are famous at last and everybody knows their name. They get it all but they then begin traveling the long, lumpy bumpy well-scarred road to perdition, and they gallop there.

I’ve never used drugs. Well, I use the ones a doctor prescribes, sometimes, when I remember, and a couple of OTCs and, OK, back in the mid-60s someone once handed me a joint and yes Bill, I did inhale and nothing happened until two hours later when I began to laugh so hysterically, I thought I’d quite fall on my face and choke on the rug. Or lose control of things one ought to not. But that’s it. All the while I was howling with maniacal laughter I kept thinking, “Is this the out of control fun stuff everyone talks about? I hate this!” The decision was made for me. I have been a recovering grass smoker for 60-plus years and have never looked back.

But these people, the people in the movies, up on the stage, I don’t get it. They work so incredibly hard to win us over, to put on performances that will make us love them, go to see them again, to spend our money to see them, to think about them, to want to know every juicy detail about them, to even be like them. The work, the sacrifices they suffer to win us over so we’ll like and love them so much we’ll do anything and spend any amount to go to see them perform.

And so they thank us how? They start using drugs, bad drugs, killing drugs. These performers who have begged and prayed and dreamed of having us adore them, stare at them, partake of their long, hard climb up to the top, decide to start ingesting and inoculating and shooting and sniffing and drinking poisons because it “makes them feel just awesome!” Just awesome?

How dare they? How did that great, wonderful guy with a large and loving family and the three names dare to do what he did? He was 46 for heaven’s sake. 46!!

Why did Janis Joplin do that too? The greatest female rocker ever and she took herself out with drugs and booze so we couldn’t hear that great, gravelly, message-laden throaty shriek/bellow of hers any longer. She was only 27 when she decided to take just one more hit, and it killed her and robbed us of her stunning, compelling performances.

Crazy, wildly funny, uninhibited John Belushi often bragged in front of all the cameras filming him about his propensity for drugs, asked for us to approve, and we did! We laughed and laughed and clapped and clapped and cheered and cheered, and so at 33 he nodded yes to the drugs and no to us, and off he went.

Jimmie Hendrix — no one, absolutely no one played the guitar the crazy, insane way he did, or sang or performed, and so when he got to be 28, he murdered himself too, and now except for the recordings and films, we don’t get him any longer either.

Elvis. Stupid idiot Elvis, after years of telling his audiences to stay clean and sober, didn’t, and lost his life in a bathroom at 42. Millions and millions of people loved him and he took himself from them because he couldn’t do without whatever it was that killed him. People still mourn that foolish man.

Judy Garland was only 47 when she gave up her life in a bathroom too, depriving us of hearing one of the most glorious voices the world has ever produced. She acted and danced, and demanded that we love her and so we did. Oh how we did. But she loved her drugs more and none of us could have helped her, and so her rainbow went suddenly dark.

The list of these young, powerful, magical performers who decided they needed the drugs more than they needed us is very long and very very sad. Do I have the right to judge them because they gave up their lives to substances instead of to us? Yes I do because I paid money and spent time enjoying and loving them, wanting to see more and more of them. They asked that we do this, went after us like starving things and we gave back love and respect and even money spent on seeing them perform for us. We did what they asked of us.

We kept our part of the bargain. We became the adoring audiences they craved and prayed for. Do all performers do this? Of course not, but enough do. We gave back what they begged from us and they thanked us by killing themselves.

And so once again we were forced to say goodbye to someone we’d come to like and love a lot, a chunky, messy, talented man with three names, the likes of which we won‘t see soon again. I am angry at him and all the others for taking the gift of themselves, disregarding and tossing it away it so stupidly and thoughtlessly. You had so many more years to give to us and we wanted to take those years, and to have the chance to thank you. We played our part but you didn’t play yours. We gave, you took and you died horribly, uselessly and stupidly. Rest in peace.

LC Van Savage is a Brunswick writer.