Maestro at playing the sad misfit
IN A career spanning six decades and more than 120 films, as well as stage and TV roles, Sir John Hurt specialised in playing eccentrics and misfits. From the pitiful heroin addict in Midnight Express to the self-confessed “stately homo of England” Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and the greatly deformed John Merrick in The Elephant Man, arguably his most famous role. Hurt himself once conceded: “I suppose I have done quite a lot of outsider figures but then drama is all about them.”
Possessing one of the finest voices in cinema, he was once described by director David Lynch as “the greatest actor I’ve ever worked with” yet Hurt’s propensity for self-destructive behaviour was well documented.
The hellraising chum of Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris he once claimed to have consumed seven bottles of wine a day in order to get into the character of Max in the film Midnight Express and also made headlines when he lunged at a pack of paparazzi at a Bafta awards bash.
His last public drinking binge came in 2004 when he was thrown out of Spearmint Rhino lap-dancing club for lewd behaviour.
A year later he married his fourth wife, Anwen Rees-Myers, a film producer 25 years his junior, and settled into a life of domestic bliss in Norfolk having given up alcohol in favour of an addiction to work.
The youngest of three children, John Vincent Hurt was born in Chesterfield and grew up in Shirebrook, a Derbyshire mining town. After attending an AngloCatholic boarding school where his talent for drawing was first spotted, he made his way to St Martins College of Art and Design in 1958 where his parents hoped he would make it as an art master. It was the last thing Hurt wanted and in 1960, against their wishes, he applied to Rada and was offered a scholarship.
By the time the course had finished he had been signed up by an agency and spent most of the 1960s working in theatre before landing his first major film role as Richard Rich in A Man For All Seasons.
The following decade saw him win plaudits for mesmerising portrayals of writer Quentin Crisp, the Roman emperor Caligula in the BBC’s I, Claudius and drug addict Max in Midnight Express, a role he accepted without reading the script once he knew Alan Parker was directing.
In 1979 he became part of movie folklore when he took on the role of crew member Kane in Ridley Scott’s Alien in which a parasitic alien burst out from his chest. This was also a period of personal contentment for the actor, who by now had fallen in love with former Vogue model MarieLise Volpeliere Pierrot.
Although the couple didn’t marry they were together for 16 years and when Marie-Lise died in a tragic horse-riding accident in 1983 Hurt was overcome with grief.
The defining moment of his career came in 1980 with The Elephant Man in which he starred opposite Anthony Hopkins and Anne Bancroft as a disfigured and mistreated man rescued by a Victorian surgeon.
Other blockbusters included White Mischief, Scandal and Hellboy, and more recently a new generation of fans were introduced to the actor through his role as Mr Ollivander in the Harry Potter films.
He was appointed CBE in 2004 and later knighted in 2015, the same year that he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Despite his illness Hurt continued to work and his last film That Good Night, in which he plays a terminally ill screenwriter coming to terms with his impending death, will be released later this year.
Speaking after his diagnosis he said: “I can’t worry about mortality but it’s impossible to get to my age and not have a little contemplation of it. We’re all just passing time and occupy our chair very briefly.”
In 2012 he won a Bafta for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema as well as three other Baftas, a Golden Globe and two Oscar nominations for The Elephant Man and Midnight Express.
He is survived by his fourth wife Anwen and his children from his third marriage.