Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of those actors, along with Daniel Day-Lewis and John C. Reilly and a couple others, where, the only reason they don’t win the Oscar every year is to give other people a chance. He’s just that good, and he seems like the consummate professional. Which is why it’s strange to hear that he recently left a rehab facility where he underwent treatment for… wait for it… heroin. This is more the kind of thing I’d expect from… say… Jared Leto.

Hoffman — who struggled with substance abuse in the past but kicked the habit for 23 years — fell off the wagon more than a year ago. He tells TMZ it started slowly with prescription pills, and recently escalated to snorting heroin. Hoffman — who won a Best Actor Oscar in 2006 for “Capote” — tells us the heroin use only lasted a week or so and he quickly realized he needed help, so he checked himself into a detox facility on the East Coast. He says he was at the facility for 10 days and checked out last Friday. Hoffman credits what he calls “a great group of friends and family” for helping him seek the treatment he needed to get better. [TMZ]

Whenever you hear about someone with a drug problem, you think to yourself, “Hey, didn’t you realize you needed help when you started, you know, SNORTING HEROIN?” So it’s nice to finally hear about a guy reacting to this problem in what seems like a logical, rational manner, without having to find himself pawning his daughter’s tennis trophies for smack money first. He had the ringer on his wake up call set to vibrate, say, and it worked just fine.

You think Philip Seymour Hoffman going to rehab for heroin is crazy, Daniel Day-Lewis once smoked crack for six months straight to play a down-and-out prostitute, and only kicked it by preparing for a role as a rehab counselor. Dude is method.