Vicar’s son lived opposite a cinema, but was never allowed to see films
children because his parents saw them as “too common”.
In 2012 he spoke out about the “inappropriate” conduct that took place at his preparatory school in Kent. “You are taken away from your home at eight years old, and you were looked after by a master or two,” he told director Alan Parker for a television programme about his life. “How can one say it… they were inappropriate. A bit of touching here and there, and so on.”
He left school to go to Saint Martin’s School of Art in London, and freely admitted a couple of wild Australian girls who picked him up in Earl’s Court had helped launch his career.
After a few glasses he said he was “absolutely flying, mucking about, doing Henry Irving, and they said, ‘You should be an actor’. But I didn’t know how to go about it. So they got hold of the forms for Rada and shoved them in front of me.” he said.
Paying his tuition fees and living expenses was difficult and he persuaded some of his friends to pose naked so he could sell their portraits.
He later recalled that when he subsequently auditioned successfully for Rada in 1960, he was so hungry he could hardly deliver his lines.
He made a name for himself in his second film role, playing the obsequious scholar Richard Rich in in 1966, before going on to star as Caligula in the TV series in 1976 and the adaptation of George Orwell’s Other celebrated roles included his performance as Stephen Ward – a key figure in the Profumo affair – in and a reprisal of his role as Quentin Crisp for in 2009. While respected for his acting and the meticulous research he put into his roles, he became almost as famous for his hell-raising antics off screen. In one colourful incident he hurled himself in a drunken rage at a group of paparazzi at a Bafta awards ceremony. His first marriage ended in the 1960s. In 1968, he started a relationship with the “love of his life” Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Porrot, lasting until her death in a riding accident 15 years later. The next year he married the US actress Donna Peacock but the couple divorced after four years. He married his third wife, Jo Dalton, in 1990 and they had two sons. But again the marriage ended in divorce, in 1995. Ten years later he wed Anwen Rees-Myers, who remained at his side for the last decade. On being awarded a knighthood for services to drama in 2015, the star said he appreciated the new title. “I like being Sir John. It works, doesn’t it? Or John,” he said. “The only thing that sticks in my craw is when people say ‘Mr Hurt’. I tell them it’s no longer correct.”