John Hurt, full name Sir John Vincent Hurt, was born on January 22, 1940, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England, and died on January 25, 2017, in Cromer, Norfolk, England. He was a British actor best renowned for his intelligent and empathetic portrayals of troubled or quirky characters.
Hurt, whose father was an Anglican preacher, grew up in the northern English town of Preston. He studied art in London before enrolling at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he graduated in 1962 with a degree in dramatic literature. He made his film and theatrical debuts in the same year, and his performance in Harold Pinter’s one-act drama The Dwarfs garnered him critical acclaim (1963).
In 1966, he appeared in Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs, which led to him being cast as Richard Rich in the critically acclaimed historical film A Man for All Seasons, which was released in 1967. (1966). Following that, Hurt achieved notoriety for supporting roles in films such as the crime dramas 10 Rillington Place (1971) and Midnight Express (1973). (1978).
He got a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the latter as a heroin addict imprisoned in a Turkish prison.
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Following a remarkable performance in the science-fiction picture Alien (1979), Hurt played as the famously disfigured Joseph Merrick (referred to as John in the film) in The Elephant Man (1980), for which he received another BAFTA Award and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Hurt continued to perform on the stage in England, most notably as Romeo in a 1973 version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and as Dada creator Tristan Tzara in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, among other roles (1974).
Additionally, he found constant employment in British television, where he received special acclaim for his depictions of gay icon Quentin Crisp in the film The Naked Civil Servant (1975) and Caligula in the television series I, Claudius (1976).
Hurt spent the majority of the 1980s and 1990s concentrating on his film career. On the screen, he has played Winston Smith in the 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-four; as a charming status seeker in Scandal (1989), which was loosely based on the Profumo affair; and as a stuffy author who becomes enamoured of a young male movie idol in Love and Death on Long Island (1994). (1997).
Aside from that, Hurt appeared in a number of smaller roles in films such as The Field (1990), a drama set in an Irish village, and Rob Roy (1995), a biopic of the Scottish outlaw. The Storyteller (1987–88), a children’s programme in which he played the titular character, was his first appearance on television.
For the first decade of the twenty-first century, Hurt starred in films such as the Australian western The Proposition (2005), the futuristic thriller V for Vendetta (2006), the action adventure Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and the espionage drama Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2010). (2011). Aside from that, he has appeared in several editions of the popular Harry Potter film series, which is based on J.K. Rowling’s books, as the wand maker Ollivander.
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A miniseries produced by the BBC, The Alan Clark Diaries, starred Hurt as politician Alan Clark in the United Kingdom in 2004. His later roles include former United States Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Recount (2008), a television movie about the aftermath of the 2000 United States presidential election, and Crisp, in the television movie An Englishman in New York, in which he reprised his beloved characterization of Crisp (2009).
The television miniseries Labyrinth (2012), the Jim Jarmusch film Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), in which he played a vampire Christopher Marlowe, and the dark sci-fi thriller Snowpiercer (2014) were among his later credits (2013). Hurt also appeared as an incarnation of the Doctor in the 50th-anniversary episodes of the science fiction television series Doctor Who, which aired in 2013.
Hurt’s subsequent stage appearances included the title part in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, which he performed in various productions beginning in 1999. Hurt was also a member of the cast of the film The Last Picture Show. Throughout his career, Hurt has also performed voices for a variety of films and television shows, including the series Watership Down (1999–2000), which was an animated adaptation of Richard Adams’ classic novel, and the television series Merlin (2008–12), among others.
Hurt was awarded the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in 2012 for his work in the film industry.
In 2004, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), and in 2015, he was elevated to the rank of Knight Bachelor. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in that same year, and he passed away in 2017. All three of Hurt’s final roles were in films that appeared later that year: an elderly barfly in My Name Is Lenny, a terminally ill screenwriter in That Good Night, and the chief of the Israeli intelligence agency in Damascus Cover.
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