Mimi O'Donnell, the longtime partner of Philip Seymour Hoffman and mother of his three children, told police that the actor appeared high when she saw him on February 1, the day before he died from an apparent heroin overdose.
O'Donnell and Hoffman were together for many years after they met in 1999, but had separated last fall. Hoffman moved into a separate apartment in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, and they split time with their children.
O'Donnell told the NYPD that she saw Hoffman at 2 p.m. on Saturday on a street near his apartment and that he appeared to be under the influence of drugs.
She spoke to him again around 8 p.m. that day and said that she thought he sounded high, reported the Daily Mail.
A makeshift memorial outside the building where Hoffman lived in the Manhattan borough of New York City. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Police are investigating where the heroin that was found around Hoffman’s body came from. The number of envelopes containing the drug--known as one of the most addictive drugs--has varied across different media outlets but has been pegged as high as 70.
O'Donnell was with the couple’s children at a playground a block and a half away from Hoffman’s apartment--where they had arranged to meet on Sunday morning--when she rushed to see Hoffman’s body after receiving the news from screenwriter David Katz, who had gone to check on Hoffman, and Hoffman’s assistant Isabella Wing-Davey.
She placed her three children inside her car and ran to the apartment, saying “I have to see him!”
In one of his last public appearances, Hoffman looked pale at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
Hoffman at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah on January 19. (Victoria Will/Invision/AP)
Rachel McAdams, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Willem Dafoe pose for a portrait during the festival. (Victoria Will/Invision/AP)
Two films he starred in premiered at the festival--“A Most Wanted Man,” and “In God’s Pocket.”
He posed for pictures both on the red carpet and for portraits off the carpet, but declined some interview requests, reported ShowBizSpy. His representative told reporters that the actor “needed a minute and didn’t feel like coming down yet.”
Hoffman also passed out after boarding a plane in Georgia last week, following a witness saying that they saw the actor drinking at a bar in Atlanta.
Hoffman was photographed drinking and smoking at a bar inside a restaurant.
A witness told TMZ that Hoffman was with a woman at the bar and that Hoffman made multiple trips to the bathroom and the witness said it looked “sketchy.”
A witness at the airport described Hoffman looking “drunk and disheveled.
Hoffman had been clean for over 20 years after entering rehab in his youth following drug problems, but relapses in late 2012 and checked himself into rehab in May 2013. He told TMZ then that he has been taking pills, and had been ingesting heroin for a week, prompting his entrance into rehab.
