John Hurt, Oscar-Nominated Star of 'The Elephant Man,' Dies at 77
Alien (2/5) Movie CLIP - Chestburster (1979) HD
The British actor of stage and screen also received an
Academy Award nom for 'Midnight Express' and was memorable in 'Alien,' three
Harry Potter films and 'Doctor Who.'
John Hurt, the esteemed British actor known for his burry
voice and weathered visage — one that was kept hidden for his most
acclaimed role, that of the deformed John Merrick in David Lynch’s The Elephant Man — has died, according to reports from
several British newspapers. He was 77.
The two-time Oscar nominee's six-decade career also included
turns on the BBC’s Doctor
Who and in A
Man for All Seasons (1966), Midnight Express (1978) and three Harry Potter
films.
He announced in June 2015 that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
On screens big and small, Hurt died what seemed a
thousand deaths. “I think I’ve got the record,” he once said. “It got to a
point where my children wouldn’t ask me if I died, but rather how do you die?”
On his YouTube page, a
video titled “The Many Deaths of John Hurt” compiled his cinematic demises in 4
minutes and 30 seconds, from The
Wild and the Willing (1962)
to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), 40 in all.
One of his most memorable came when he played Kane, the
first victim in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), in which he collapses over a
table and a snakelike alien bursts out of his chest. (How'd they do that? There
was an artificial chest screwed to the table, and Hurt was underneath.)
“Ridley didn’t tell the cast,” executive producer Ronald
Shusett told Empire magazine in 2009. “He said,
‘They’re just going to see it.’ ”
“The reactions were going to be the most difficult
thing,” Scott explained. “If an actor is just acting terrified, you can’t get the genuine
look of raw, animal fear. What I wanted was a hardcore reaction.”
Hurt then lampooned the famous torso-busting scene for
director Mel Brooks — whose production company produced 1980's The
Elephant Man — for
the 1987 comedy Spaceballs.
The
Elephant Man
received eight Academy Award nominations, including one for Hurt as best actor,
but went home empty on Oscar night. (Hurt lost out to Robert De Niro as boxer
Jake LaMotta in Raging
Bull.)
In 1980, he recalled the extensive makeup needed to become
the kind-hearted man with the monstrous skull.
“It never occurred to me it would take eight hours for
them to apply the full thing — virtually a working day in itself. There were 16
different pieces to that mask,” he said. “With all that makeup on, I couldn’t
be sure what I was doing. I had to rely totally on [Lynch].”
Hurt also garnered an Oscar best supporting actor
nomination and a Golden Globe win in 1979 for Midnight
Express, in which he portrayed a heroin addict in a Turkish prison.
The Alan Parker drama was based on the true story of Billy Hayes (played by
Brad Davis), an American college student caught smuggling drugs.
“I loved making Midnight
Express,” he said in 2014. “We were making commercial films then
that really did have cracking scenes in them, as well as plenty to say, you
know?”
His more recent film appearances came in Snowpiercer (2013), The Journey (2016) and Jackie (2016). He is set to be seen in the
upcoming features That Good Night and My Name Is Lenny and was to play Neville Chamberlain in
the upcoming Joe Wright drama Darkest Hour.
John Vincent Hurt was born Jan. 22, 1940, in
Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. He studied art at his parents’ behest,
earning an art teacher’s diploma. Disillusioned with the prospect of becoming a
teacher, Hurt moved to London, where he won an acting scholarship at the Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art. He studied there for two years, securing bit parts in
TV shows.
“I wanted to act very early. I didn’t know how to become
an actor, as such, nor did I know that it was possible to be a professional
actor, but I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9,” he told The Guardian in 2000. “I was effused with a feeling
of complete and total enjoyment, and I felt that’s where I should be.”
Hurt made his London stage debut in Infanticide in the House of
Fred Ginger in 1962.
That year, he acted in his first film, The
Wild and the Willing, and his role as the duplicitous baron Richard
Rich in Oscar best picture winner A
Man for All Seasons helped him become more widely known in the
U.S.
Hurt often played wizened, sinister characters. In his
younger years, his wiry frame, sallow skin and beady eyes curled together in
performances that bespoke menace and hard-wrought wisdom. He was especially
effective playing psychologically ravaged characters, like when he was a jockey
plagued with cancer in Champions (1984) or the viciously decadent
Caligula in the 1976 BBC miniseries I,
Claudius.
Hurt brought his peculiarly powerful persona to the role
of Mr. Ollivander in Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
and Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
and Part 2 (2011).
He also had a recurring role as Trevor “Broom”
Bruttenholm in Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) and was the voice of the
character in the 2007 TV movie Hellboy
Animated: Blood and Iron.
Other film credits include The Sailor From Gibraltar (1967), Sinful Davey (1969), 10 Rillington Place (1971), The Osterman Weekend (1983), White Mischief (1987), King Ralph (1991) and Rob Roy (1995). He played a fascist leader of
Great Britain in V
for Vendetta (2006)
and was Professor Oxley in Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).
Hurt also was known for his rich, nicotine-toned timbre,
which won him many voiceover assignments. He was the narrator in The Tigger Movie (2000), Dogville (2003), Manderlay (2005) and Charlie Countryman (2013) and lent his dulcet utterances
to The Lord of the Rings (1978), Watership Down (1978), The Black Cauldron (1985), Thumbelina (1994) and the Oscar-nominated short
film The Gruffalo (2009).
“I have always been aware of voice in film. I think that
it’s almost 50 percent of your equipment [as an actor],” he once said. “It’s as
important as what you look like, certainly on stage and possibly on film as
well. If you think of any of the great American stars, you think of their
voices and their looks, any of them — from Clark Gable to Rock Hudson.”
For the small screen, Hurt starred in the TV shows The Storyteller, The Alan Clark Diaries, The Confession and Merlin and in the miniseries Crime and Punishment and Labyrinth. He
notably played the War Doctor in the 2013-14 season of Doctor Who.
On participating in the Whovian fandom, Hurt said in 2013: “I’ve done a couple of
conferences where you sit and sign autographs for people and then you have
photographs taken with them and a lot of them are all dressed up in alien suits
or Doctor Who whatevers. I was terrified of doing it
because I thought they’d all be loonies, but they are absolutely, totally
charming as anything. I’m not saying it’s the healthiest thing — I don’t know
whether it is or isn’t — but they are very charming.”
The accomplished stage actor performed with the Royal
Shakespeare Company and Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1994, he starred
opposite Helen Mirren in Bill Bryden’s West End production of A Month in the Country,
and he scraped out an edgy and vigorously dour performance in Samuel Beckett’s
autobiographical one-man drama Krapp’s
Last Tape in 1999.
When asked about the difference between film and stage
acting, Hurt explained: “It’s rather like two different sports. You use two
completely different sets of muscles.”
In 2012, Hurt was honored with a lifetime achievement award
by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, then was knighted by Queen
Elizabeth II in July 2015.
Survivors include his fourth wife Anwen Rees-Myers, whom
he married in 2005, and sons Alexander and Nicholas.
