John Hurt - Selected filmography

Actor, born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, C England, UK. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his stage debut in 1962 at the Arts Theatre, London. He won an Emmy Award for playing the part of Quentin Crisp in the television play The Naked Civil Servant (1975), and BAFTA awards for Midnight Express (1978) and The Elephant Man (1980). Later TV work includes Bait (2002) and The Alan Clark Diaries (2004). Other films include Alien (1978), Rob Roy (1995), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), and Shooting Dogs (2005). His theatre work includes Samuel Beckett's solo play Krapp's Last Tape (2000).

Career

Hurt's first film was 1962's The Wild and the Willing, but his first major role was as Richard Rich in 1966's A Man for All Seasons. However, it was his portrayal of the outrageous Quentin Crisp in the 1975 TV play, The Naked Civil Servant, that shot him to fame, earning the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor in the process. He subsequently developed a successful film career, with his best known roles including 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 as "John" Merrick in the Joseph Merrick biography The Elephant Man, for which he won a Bafta.

Hurt, who played Winston Smith in the 1984 adaptation of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, assumed the role of a Big Brother-esque leader of a fascist Great Britain in the 2006 film V for Vendetta, a movie which draws many parallels to the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Selected filmography

The Oxford Murders (2008) V for Vendetta (2006) Shooting Dogs (2005) The Skeleton Key (2005) The Proposition (2005) Manderlay (2005) (TV) Valiant (2005) (voice) Pride (2004) (TV) (voice) Hellboy (2004) The Alan Clark Diaries (2004) Dogville (2003) (voice) Owning Mahowny (2003) Crime and Punishment (2002) Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001) Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) The Tigger Movie (2000) (voice) All the Little Animals (1998) Contact (1997) Love and Death on Long Island (1997) Dead Man (1995) Rob Roy (1995) Thumbelina (1994) Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993) Six Characters in Search of an Author (1992) (TV) King Ralph (1992) The Field (1990) Frankenstein Unbound (1990) Scandal (1989) The Jim Henson Hour (1989) (TV series) Spaceballs (1987) White Mischief (1987) Aria (1986) The Black Cauldron (1985) (voice) Champions (1984) Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) The Hit (1984) King Lear (1984) (TV) The Osterman Weekend (1983) Partners (1982) The Plague Dogs (1982) (voice) History of the World: Part I (1981) Heaven's Gate (1980) The Elephant Man (1980) (nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, won BAFTA for best actor) Alien (1979) The Lord of the Rings (1978) (voice) Midnight Express (1978) (nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor) Watership Down (1978) (voice) I, Claudius (1977) (miniseries) The Naked Civil Servant (1975) (TV) Little Malcolm (and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs) (1974) Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (1971) Sinful Davey (1969) 10 Rillington Place (1969) A Man for All Seasons (1966)