John hurt

This chameleonic actor was born on January 22, 1940 in Derbyshire (United Kingdom). The son of an Anglican minister and a retired actress, he was the youngest of three siblings, and due to a relative age difference, John spent most of his childhood in solitude; he would soon begin to display his artistic skills.

After finishing his studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he debuted on stage. It was 1962 and he was already showing how easy he was to transform. The same year he landed his first film role in The Good and the Willing , a rather mediocre romantic drama, albeit with an adequate performance by Hurt.

At the beginning of the sixties he combined theater and television until in 1966, after premiering the play “Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs”, he caught the attention of director Fred Zinnemann ( Alone in the face of danger ) . , which that same year gave him a role in no less thanA man for eternity , great historical drama that faced the corrupt Henry VIII and his Lord Chancellor Thomas More. Hurt played More’s hysterical confidant here.

Also memorable was his incarnation of the emblematic Quentin Crisp , artist, storyteller and gay icon of the seventies, inThe Naked Civil Servant , made-for-TV British television film, a performance which earned Hurt a BAFTA Award. From this moment on, jobs began to pour in and filmmakers fought over him. Thus, he agreed to put himself in the shoes of Caligula in the seriesI, Claudio (1976), another masterpiece of British television.

Two years later, he accompanied Brad Davis in the Turkish cells of that disturbing story that wasThe midnight express . Hurt earned, with this role, his first Oscar nomination as a supporting actor.

But if we are to cite disturbing papers, we must speak ofAlien, the eighth passenger . Hurt plays here, the crew member of a ship that has the misfortune to harbor an alien in the bowels of him. The moment it explodes is one of the most shocking scenes in Ridley Scott ‘s film . One cannot avoid exclaiming an “Aaaaag” halfway between fear and disgust.

Chameleon, as we said, in his next great appearance he completely changed register. It was in 1980, when David Lynch turned him intoThe elephant man ; a beautiful story based on true events, which tells the life of a poor man who was born with malformations and whose thick skin resembled that of a pachyderm. John Hurt also did a brilliant job of voicing, delivering each of his sentences with the difficulty of someone who is not only learning to speak but also has crooked lips. The actor, but above all the personality that he developed, here made the viewer fall in love with John Merrick – the elephant man – and feel a deep compassion for the character. Though his portrayal earned him yet another Academy nomination, it was ultimately Robert de Niro —withWild bull – who took the statuette.

For some years his appearances on the big screen were often as supporting:the meadow ,Dead Man … until in 1998 he returned to lead the cast. It was in the romantic dramaJohn Lynch ‘s Night Train ,where he played an ex-con who, after being released from prison, finds himself in the crosshairs of a gangster to whom he owes money.

If there is something that this actor especially stands out for, it is his peculiar voice, with a markedly theatrical character and a noticeable British accent that he has refused to part with over the years. Among his contributions as voice-over, that of the “dogmatist” Lars von Trier stands out , who chose him as the narrator in the diptych formed byDogville andManderlay .

It is immensely difficult to condense the extensive filmography of John Hurt, which is why we can only cite two of his most representative recent works: on the one hand, the fantastic filmHellboy , where again it was difficult for us to identify him when he appeared characterized as a mad scientist in his role as Professor Broom; and on the other, the thriller by Spanish Álex de la Iglesia :The Oxford Murders , where Hurt becomes a mathematical genius who must discover the clues, in numerical code, that a serial killer leaves behind.