John Hurt

JOHN HURT is one of Britain‘s best known, most critically acclaimed and versatile actors. It was his defining film roles as Max in Midnight Express (1978) and as John Merrick in The Elephant Man (1980) that thrust him into the international spotlight with Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor, respectively.

A trio of roles in 1984 rewarded Hurt with the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for that year for The Hit, Champions and 1984. His other notable film credits include A Man for All Seasons , The Field, Scandal, Rob Roy and John Boorman‘s Two Nudes Bathing (for which Hurt received a CableACE Award in 1995), as well as an acclaimed performance in Richard Kwietniowski‘s Love and Death on Long Island.

Hurt was born in 1940, the son of Arnold Herbert (an Anglican vicar) and Phyllis Massey (an engineer and amateur actress). He was a stagehand with the Lincoln Repertory and studied at St. Martins School of Art, London, before winning a scholarship to RADA.

Initially a stage actor, Hurt made his West End debut in 1962 and went on to take the 1963 Critics‘ Award for Most Promising Actor in Harold Pinter‘s The Dwarfs. He also appeared in Pinter‘s The Caretaker, O‘Casey‘s The Shadow of a Gunman, Stoppard‘s Travesties for the RSC and Turgenev‘s A Month in the Country.

The year 2000 saw his greatly acclaimed performance in Samuel Beckett‘s Krapp‘s Last Tape in London‘s West End. In 2002, Hurt shared the Variety Club Award for Outstanding Performance in a Stage Play with Penelope Wilton for their performances in Brian Friel‘s Afterplay.

Hurt‘s impressive body of television work commenced in 1961 and has included such noteworthy roles as Caligula in I, Claudius, Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and, most memorably, as Quentin Crisp in the autobiographical The Naked Civil Servant, a role for which Hurt a Emmy Award received Best Actor and a BAFTA Best Television Actor Award.

In 1999, Hurt filmed Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, directed by Atom Egoyan, and in 2000 came Tabloid TV, directed by David Blair. The year 2001 was spent filming Miranda , directed by Marc Munden; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, directed by Chris Columbus; and Owning Mahowny, directed by Richard Kwietniowski.

This was followed by the film Hellboy , directed by Guillermo del Toro; The Alan Clark Diaries, for the BBC; Skeleton Key, directed by Iain Softley; Beyond the Gates, directed by Michael Caton-Jones; and The Proposition, directed by John Hillcoat.

Hurt was seen in V for Vendetta, written and produced by the Wachowski brothers; heard as the narrator in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; and seen as Professor Oxley in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He portrayed U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher in the HBO film Recount, directed by Jay Roach. Hurt was also seen as Dr. Iannis in Captain Corelli's Mandolin, directed by John Madden.

Hurt appeared in Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control as well as 44 Inch Chest , directed by Malcolm Venville. He reprised his role as Quentin Crisp in the 2009 feature An Englishman in New York , an official selection at both the Berlin International Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival.

Hurt was seen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Parts 1 and 2 and Late Bloomers, opposite Isabella Rossellini, with Lars Von Trier's Melancholia.

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