John Hurt Biography

Summary

"John Vincent Hurt", CBE (born 22 January 1940) is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in "The Elephant Man", Winston Smith in "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Mr. Braddock in "The Hit", Stephen Ward in "Scandal" and Quentin Crisp in "The Naked Civil Servant" and "An Englishman in New York". Recognizable for his distinctive rich voice, he has also enjoyed a successful voice acting career, starring in films such as "Watership Down", "The Lord of the Rings" and "Dogville", as well as BBC television series "Merlin".

Hurt initially came to prominence for his role as Richard Rich in the 1966 film "A Man for All Seasons", and has since appeared in such popular motion pictures as: "Alien", "Midnight Express", "Rob Roy", "V for Vendetta", "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", the "Harry Potter" film series and the "Hellboy" film series. Hurt is one of England's best-known, most prolific and sought-after actors, and has had a versatile film career spanning six decades. He is also known for his many Shakespearean roles. Hurt has received multiple awards and honours throughout his career including three BAFTA Awards and a Golden Globe Award, with six and two nominations respectively, as well as two Academy Award nominations. His character's final scene in "Alien" is consistently named as one of the most memorable in cinematic history.

Early life

John Hurt was born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, when his father was vicar of Shirebrook. He is the son of Phyllis (née Massey), an amateur actress and engineer, and Arnold Herbert Hurt, a mathematician who became an Anglican clergyman. Hurt has an older brother, Br. Anselm (born Michael), a monk based at Glenstal Abbey in Ireland whose books Hurt has contributed to. He also has an adopted sister, Monica. His father was a vicar at St John in Sunderland, but in 1937 he moved his family to Derbyshire, where he became Perpetual Curate of Holy Trinity church. When John was five, his father became the vicar of St Stephens Church at Woodville in South Derbyshire and remained there until 1952. In 1945 the Reverend Mr. Hurt founded 1st Woodville (St Stephens) Scout Group which is still going strong today.

Hurt had a strict upbringing: the family lived opposite a cinema but he was not allowed to visit. He was also not permitted to mix with local children because in his parents' view they were 'too common'.

Education

At the age of eight he was sent to the Anglo-Catholic St Michael's Preparatory School in Otford, Kent, where he eventually developed his passion for acting. He decided he wanted to become an actor, and his first role was that of a girl in a school production "The Bluebird" (L'Oiseau Bleu) by Maurice Maeterlinck. While he was a pupil at the school he was abused by Donald Cormack, then Senior Master of the school and later Head Teacher (until his retirement in 1981). Hurt described how Cormack would remove his two false front teeth and put his tongue in the boys' mouths, and how he would rub their faces with his stubble. Hurt said that the experience affected him 'hugely'.

His father moved to St Aidan Church in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, and Hurt (then aged 12) became a boarder at Christ's Hospital School (then a grammar school) in Lincoln, because he had failed the entrance exam for admission to his brother's school. Hurt often accompanied his mother to Cleethorpes Repertory Theatre, but his parents disliked his acting ambitions and encouraged him to become an art teacher instead. His headmaster, Mr. Franklin, laughed when Hurt told him he wanted to be an actor, saying 'you wouldn't stand a chance in the profession.' At the age of 17, Hurt enrolled in Grimsby Art School (now the "East Coast School of Art & Design"), where he studied art.

In 1959 Hurt won a scholarship allowing him to study for an Art Teachers Diploma (ATD) at Central St. Martins College in Holborn, London. Despite the scholarship, paying for his studies was financially difficult and so he persuaded some of his friends to pose nude and sold the portraits. In 1960 he won a scholarship to RADA where he trained for two years. He was then cast in small roles on TV.

Career

Hurt's first film was "The Wild and the Willing" (1962), but his first major role was as Richard Rich in "A Man for All Seasons" (1966). His portrayal of Quentin Crisp in the 1975 TV play, "The Naked Civil Servant" gave prominence and earned him the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. The following year, Hurt played the Roman emperor Caligula in the BBC drama serial, "I, Claudius". In 1978, he appeared in "Midnight Express", for which he won a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (the latter of which he lost to Christopher Walken for his performance in "The Deer Hunter"). Hurt played Hazel, the heroic rabbit leader of his warren in the film adaptation of "Watership Down" and later played the major villain, General Woundwort, in the animated television series version.

His roles at the beginning of the 1980s included Kane, the memorable first victim of the title creature in the film "Alien" (a role which he reprised as a parody in "Spaceballs"); would-be art school radical Scrawdyke in "Little Malcolm"; and 'John' Merrick in the Joseph Merrick biography "The Elephant Man", for which he won a BAFTA and was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Actor. He also had a starring role in Sam Peckinpah's critically panned but moderately successful final film, "The Osterman Weekend" (1983). Also in 1983 he starred as the Fool opposite Sir Laurence Olivier's King in "King Lear". Hurt also appeared as Raskolnikov in the BBC series "Crime and Punishment" in 1980.

, Hurt and in 2009.

Hurt has taken roles in famous political allegories, first playing the hero in an early production and then the tyrannical villain in a later work. For instance, he played Winston Smith in the 1984 adaptation of the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and then assumed the role of a Big Brother-esque leader of a fascist Great Britain in the 2006 film "V for Vendetta", a movie that drew many parallels to the world of Orwell's 1984.

In 1985, Hurt starred in Disney's "The Black Cauldron", voicing the film's main antagonist, the Horned King. In 1986, Hurt provided the voiceover for "AIDS: Iceberg / Tombstone", a public information film warning of the dangers of AIDS. He had a memorable supporting role as 'Bird' O'Donnell in Jim Sheridan's 1990 film "The Field", which garnered him another BAFTA nomination. In 2001, he played Mr. Ollivander, the wand-maker, in the first Harry Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone". He returned for the adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", though his scenes in that film were cut. He also returned for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows". In 1999, Hurt provided narration on the British musical group Art of Noise's concept album "The Seduction of Claude Debussy". He was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in June 2004. During this time, he narrated a 4 part series on the Universe which was released on DVD in 1999. In May 2008, he appeared in Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" as Harold Oxley. He is also the voice of The Great Dragon, in the BBC television series, Merlin.

In 2008, 33 years after "The Naked Civil Servant", Hurt reprised the role of Quentin Crisp in "An Englishman in New York". This film depicts Crisp's later years in New York.

In June 2009, Hurt played the on-screen Big Brother for Paper Zoo Theatre Company's production of Orwell's "Nineteen-Eighty Four". The theatre production premiered at the National Media Museum, in Bradford and will be touring during early 2010. Hurt said, 'I think Paper Zoo thought it would be quite ironic to have the person who played Winston having risen in the party. From the Chestnut Tree Cafe, he's managed to get his wits together again, now understanding that 2 and 2 make 5, and becomes Big Brother. So it tickled my fancy, and of course I looked up Paper Zoo, and they seem to me to be the sort of company that's essential in the country as we know it, and doing a lot of really good stuff.'

Personal life

In 1962 Arnould Hurt left his parish in Cleethorpes to become headmaster of St Michaels College in the Central American country of Belize. In that same year Hurt first performed on the London stage, and also married actress Annette Robertson: the marriage ended in 1964. In 1967 he began his longest relationship, with the French model Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Pierrot, the sister of fashion photographer Jean-Claude Volpeliere-Pierrot, whose son Ben would later become a teen idol singing in the pop band Curiosity Killed the Cat.

Hurt's relationship with Marie-Lise was intense and went beyond a casual affair. The couple had planned to get married after fifteen years, when things evolved tragically on 26 January 1983: Hurt and Volpeliere-Pierrot went horse riding early in the morning near their house in Ascott-under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire, when suddenly Volpeliere-Pierrot lost her stirrup and was thrown off the horse, landing on her head in the middle of the lane. She went into a coma and died later that day.

Hurt got married for the second time on 6 September 1984 to Texan actress and old friend Donna Peacock at a local Registrar's office. The couple moved to Kenya and tried unsuccessfully to have children through IVF. They divorced in early January 1990.

Whilst temporarily living in Ireland he infamously hit and killed a sheep and was brought to court over the dispute.

Soon afterwards (on 24 January 1990) Hurt married American production assistant Jo Dalton whom he had met while filming "Scandal". With her he had two sons: Sasha John Vincent Hurt (born 6 February 1990) and Nick Hurt (born 5 February 1993), who are currently residing in Waterford, Ireland. His son Nick has gone to acting school in England and wishes to follow in his father's footsteps. This marriage ended in 1996. At one point Hurt was involved with Sarah Owen, twenty years his junior, and with whom he lived in County Wicklow, Ireland. In March 2005, Hurt married his fourth wife, advertising film producer Anwen Rees Meyers.

Hurt's mother died in 1975, and his father died in 1999 at the age of 95.

In January 2002, John Hurt received an honorary degree from the University of Derby and in January 2006 received the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Hull.

In 2007, Hurt took part in the BBC genealogical television series "Who Do You Think You Are?," which investigated part of his family history. Prior to participating in the programme, Hurt had harboured a love of Ireland and was enamoured of a 'deeply beguiling' family legend that suggested his great-grandmother had been the illegitimate daughter of Irish nobleman the Marquess of Sligo. The genealogical evidence uncovered seemed to contradict the family legend, rendering the 'suggestion' doubtful. Coincidentally, the search revealed that his great-grandmother had previously lived in Grimsby at a location within a mile of the art college at which Hurt had once enrolled. He is distantly related to author Enid Blyton on his father's side.

Since 2006, John Hurt is the patron of Project Harar, a UK-based charity working in Ethiopia for children with facial disfigurements.

Since 2009, John Hurt is the patron of QUAD (a centre for art and film in Derby). On 25 September 2009 Hurt visited QUAD and took part in a Q&A directly preceding a screening of the film 'The Night Train' as part of the celebrations celebrating the 1st Birthday at QUAD (opened on 26 September 2008). The day after, 26 September, John Hurt was guest of honour at Derby County vs Bristol City and went on the pitch at Pride Park at half time to oversee a prize draw.

Filmography

Video games

"Privateer 2: The Darkening" (1996) - Joe the Bartender

"Tender Loving Care" (1998) - Dr. Turner

Other projects, contributions

"When Love Speaks" (2002, EMI Classics) - 'Sonnet 145'('Those lips that Love's own hand did make')

Hurt performs in drag for the promotional video for "Attitude" by the music group Suede.

Hurt is seen as the 'Brian Epstein' esque mogul in Paul McCartney's 1982 video for the song 'Take It Away'. McCartney explains in the video commentary section of The McCartney Years DVD (for the song 'Take it Away') that Hurt himself was a friend of The Beatles and Brian Epstein, and that The Beatles had watched Hurt act in the mid-60's and thought him a fine actor.

Hurt is the narrator on the album The Seduction of Claude Debussy by the band Art of Noise (1999).

John Hurt is the narrator of the 4 part series released in 1999 on The Universe for Channel 4 International, available on DVD.