Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died of a suspected heroin overdose, had recently split from his partner.
Police investigating Hoffman’s death said they had found nearly 50 bags of heroin in his Manhattan apartment.
Hoffman, 46, was found dead, from an apparent drug overdose, by friend and playwright David Bar Katz and Hoffman’s assistant, Isabella Wing-Davey, yesterday while his children waited in a playground a block away with their mother, Mimi O’Donnell.
It has emerged that Hoffman was recently living apart from O’Donnell and their three children in the rented apartment where he died near the family home.
O’Donnell had asked Wing-Davey to check on the actor after he failed to pick up son Cooper, 10, and daughters Tallulah, 7, and Willa, 5, from the playground.
Discarded syringes and prescription drugs were found in the apartment after Hoffman was found on the bathroom floor with a syringe in his left arm, reports say.
Police found several empty bags branded Ace of Hearts – a street name for heroin – in the apartment, law enforcement sources told CNN.
Sources close to the star said that despite being sober for 23 years, he had an ongoing battle with addiction.
“He was always quite intense, a little bit paranoid and troubled. Addiction was always going to be a constant struggle for him, but this is so unexpected,” an insider told FOX411.
“He was an incredibly knowledgeable person and so concerned with problems and issues around the world. He was one of those people with such an awakened mind he couldn’t switch off.”
The website has also reported that police were trying to track down a surveillance video at an automatic teller machine that they believed could hold a connection to the star’s death.
A man said he saw Hoffman at the machine with two men the night before his death in what the witness believed to be a drug deal.
“A man told police he saw the actor withdraw large amounts of cash at an ATM at a bank near Hoffman’s West Village apartment at about 8pm Saturday,” FOX411 reported.
“He said he saw Hoffman hand over the cash and appear to purchase drugs from two men, both wearing messenger bags, who appeared to be working together.”
The man said the Oscar-winning actor looked “very sweaty”.
It has been alleged that Hoffman was spending as much as US$10,000 on heroin and painkiller Oxycontin a month.
“He just bought five bundles of dope last week,” an insider told RadarOnline.
“Heroin is one of the cheaper drugs, but Hoff wasn’t buying the cheap stuff. Still, to be spending ten grand, he was using hard.”
The website says there are 10 bags of heroin in a bundle.
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