John Hurt, star of ‘Elephant Man’, dies

VETERAN British actor Sir John Hurt has died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 77.

He received two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe award, and four Bafta awards, with the fourth being a lifetime achievement recognition for his contribution to British cinema. He was knighted in 2015 for services to drama.

His Oscar nominations were for his star turn in The Elephant Man and for his supporting role in Midnight Express.

Hurt, who had starred in 200 films and television series over a career spanning six decades, revealed in 2015 that he was suffering from the early stages of pancreatic cancer and that he was receiving treatment.

Hurt said at the time of his cancer diagnosis that he intended to continue working. He most recently starred in the TV crime series The Last Panthers and in the Oscar-nominated film Jackie, playing a priest who consoled the newly widowed wife of slain US president John Kennedy.

Hurt, a native of Derbyshire in England, garnered his first Academy Award nomination for his supporting role as Max, an inmate and heroin addict who befriends the imprisoned drug smuggler Billy inside a Turkish jail in the gripping 1978 drama Midnight Express.

He earned greater acclaim, and an Oscar nomination as best lead actor, for his portrayal of Joseph Merrick, a grossly disfigured Victorian-era man struggling to project his humanity while enduring the indignities of life as a side-show freak in The Elephant Man. With his face obscured behind the character’s deformity, Hurt’s performance rested largely on the expression of the actor’s signature raspy voice.

Hurt also played a key role in the original 1979 sci-fi thriller Alien. His character became the first member of a spaceship crew to fall victim to a fearsome life form when a deadly parasitic creature burst from his chest.

Other notable credits included supporting parts as a village doctor in Greece whose daughter falls in love with an Italian military officer during World War 2 in the 2001 film Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, and as the eccentric wand maker Garrick Ollivander in the movie franchise. LIFETIME AWARD: John Hurt in 2012 with the Bafta he won for his outstanding contribution to British cinema

Performance rested on the actor’s raspy voice