Haunted by the love he lost
Adored as one of our f inest actors – and a true gentleman – John Hurt married four times. But, say friends, it was the tragic death of the lover he didn’t wed that drove him to drunken torment
SIR JOHN Hurt was once described as an actor who let audiences read his thoughts.
It was a facility that lent mesmerising intensity to his craft, particularly when he played those on society’s margins: a heroin addict in Midnight Express; the flamboyant gay icon Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant; the monstrously deformed John Merrick in The Elephant Man, his defining role.
But off stage and screen, Sir John – one of Britain’s finest actors who was lauded yesterday after his death aged 77 last week as ‘the most gentlemanly of gentlemen’ by his widow – was not always so decipherable.
According to friends, his enigmatic aspect had much to do with the death of one of his life’s great loves, former Vogue model Marie-Lise Volpeliere Pierrot.
She was killed in 1983 in a freak riding accident, a tragedy that would haunt Sir John until his final days. Having met in the late Sixties when both were making their mark on Swinging London, John and MarieLise made a striking pair.
Ironically, though he would marry four times, the couple never wed but lived together for 15 years, in what was Sir John’s longest relationship.
‘My entire generation was in love with Marie-Lise, she was very special,’ said Lord Puttnam, who produced Midnight Express. ‘And I think there was a bit of John that never got over her death.’
Certainly, it was blamed for casting Hurt into his bleakest period, when his hell-raising life was shaped by alcohol. His exploits were splashed across newspapers and he once lunged at a pack of paparazzi at a Bafta awards ceremony. Never, though, did he let his problems eclipse his work.
The riding accident happened near the couple’s cottage in Ascott-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire, when Hurt, then 42, was trying out a new horse and 44-year-old Marie-Lise, an experienced rider, was on an older one.
He said at the time: ‘It was a very windy day, and the horses probably thought they were out hunting and bolted. We tried to get into a field through an open gate, but the horses decided they were going home.
‘I was thrown off and landed in an elderberry bush but Lise’s horse went on.’
She too was thrown off but landed on the road and received head injuries. ‘When I got to her she was still conscious, though in pain,’ said Hurt. She was taken to hospital but died later that day. At the time, they had been planning to marry.
Much later he would say of her death: ‘It was my lowest point when she died. It was a mighty relationship. All over the place but very powerful.’ In time, Hurt conquered drink, overcame despair and found lasting love once again with fourth wife, Anwen Rees-Myers. He once said that they were ‘wonderfully married’.
Yesterday, Lady Hurt, a former actress and classical pianist, confirmed he died at their Norfolk home on Wednesday. He had been treated for pancreatic cancer.
In a moving tribute, she said: ‘John was the most sublime of actors and the most gentlemanly of gentlemen with the greatest of hearts and the most generosity of spirit. He touched all our lives with joy and magic and it will be a strange world without him.’
Lady Hurt, more than two decades his junior, once said she fell in love with his voice when she was 14. At that time, burnished by tobacco and whisky, it was a voice that had already acquired unmistakeable cadences.
‘There are perhaps only three or four people around that you can identify immediately by their voices and John was one of them,’ said Lord Puttnam in an interview with The Mail on Sunday yesterday. ‘It was beautiful.’
Recalling the time they worked together on Midnight Express, he added: ‘The character he played was created by John. Aspects of it were on the page but he made that person.
‘He was extraordinary, a divine man. I last saw him at Lord Attenborough’s memorial [in 2015]. He did look very
‘It was my lowest point when she died’
ill but as ever he was enormously affectionate: you didn’t get a little hug from John, you got a huge hug.’
Born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, in 1940, Sir John’s career spanned six decades and he appeared in more than 120 films as well as numerous stage and television roles.
He went to St Martin’s School of Art in London, but dropped out. He then gained a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1960 but said he had been so hungry, he could hardly deliver his lines.
It was not until 1978 that he achieved recognition as a fine character actor, gaining an Oscar nomination for his performance in Alan Parker’s Midnight Express.
In 1979, he starred as Kane in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror Alien. The death of his character – when an alien violently erupts from his stomach – has often been voted as one of cinema’s most memorable moments.
Once asked how he managed to regularly turn in such performances, he said: ‘The only way I can describe it is
that I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I’m sorry to tell you I can’t describe.’
Lord Puttnam said Sir John’s breakthrough role in the 1966 film A Man For All Seasons which depicts the final years of Sir Thomas More, is often overlooked but saw the actor turn in an ‘extraordinary’ performance.
‘From that point on he was a frontline actor,’ he said. ‘Then there was The Naked Civil Servant. This set the bar for TV performances very high. It was an unusual piece of work an and a breakthrough p piece that took guts; h he handled it with e exceptional aplomb. But I think the defining moment of his career was The Elephant Man. I have been using his per performance in teaching. There are scenes between John and Anthon Anthony Hopkins that are truly breathtaking.’ Besides The Naked Civil Servant, Hurt won legions of TV fans for his portrayal of Caligula in 1970s drama I, Claudius and much later won over a new generation playing wand-maker Mr Ollivander in three of the Harry Potter films. He said that age had mellowed him and he admitted to being happier sitting with his painting easels than being out on the town. His first marriage to actress Annette Robertson lasted two years in the 1960s. A year after Marie-Lise died, he married US actress Donna Peacock but the couple divorced four years later, although they remained good friends.
He married his third wife, Jo Dalton, in 1990 and they had two sons. They divorced in 1995.
He wed Anwen Rees-Myers in 2005. Sir John was knighted in 2015 for his services to drama.
After his cancer diagnosis the same year, he said: ‘I can’t say I 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 2013, he appeared in Doctor Who as the War Doctor. He was still working up until his death, starring in Jackie Kennedy biopic Jackie, thriller Damascus Cover and the upcoming biopic of boxer Lenny McLean, My Name Is Lenny.
He was also filming Darkest Hour, in which he starred as Neville Chamberlain opposite Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill, scheduled to be released in December.
He was extraordinary, a divine man. You didn’t get a little hug from John, you got a huge hug LORD PUTTNAM YESTERDAY