JOHN Hurt, who passed away last week, was an astonishingly productive actor. That whiskey-soaked voice, so raspy and unmistakable, lifted many a production to a higher level down the decades, and that unmade bed of a face that always radiated a kind of quiet vulnerability graced more great movies and groundbreaking television productions than it had any right to, really.
He was an agile actor as well, as likely to be found illuminating I, Claudius on the small screen as he was shocking the watching world in a science fiction epic like Alien on the big.
Some have brushed off that varied back catalogue of work by lazily suggesting he was merely a “fine British character actor” and while his tendency to take on small roles that added much needed actorly gravitas to box office beasts like the Harry Potter franchise plays into that assessment there is much to salute in his onscreen life.
For the purposes of these pages I’ll pick just three roles that prove, in my mind at least, that we are talking about one of the true greats of his profession.
There’s his portrayal of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty Four (1984) for a start. It may not be the greatest ever adaptation of George Orwell’s shockingly prescient novel of state control of the individual – that honour would have to go the BBC production of the late 50s that made a television star out of Peter Cushing – but Hurt’s portrayal of the author’s everyman figure Smith as he is crushed underfoot by the state is incredible.
A real, deeply moving portrait of a human being beaten and bullied into submission by 'Big Brother', it’s a perfect example of how the actor could take a role and wring every last ounce of humanity out of it.
On television Hurt broke all kinds of small-screen taboos in the mid-70s with his beautifully judged performance as flamboyant gay author Quentin Crisp. The Naked Civil Servant was a game changer in British TV drama and Hurt’s brave and deeply layered portrayal of a character who until then had been marginalised and mocked by much of the mainstream contemporary media challenged the deep homophobia of the era and provided a genuine alternative to the crass clichés of homosexuality that abounded in the 70s. Again, his ability to get at the humanity behind the headlines was there for all to see.
Perhaps his greatest performance came in The Elephant Man, though. Director David Lynch’s 1980 masterpiece saw the actor bring the story of John Merrick, a man whose physical disfigurement saw him turned into little more than a Victorian freak show, beautifully to the big screen. Hurt’s deeply moving portrayal of Merrick, with his lisping voice and gentle demeanour, was so affecting it swiftly became a target for parody, always a sure sign that something has hit the mark.
That he played that part with his distinctive face hidden under layer upon layer of heavy prosthetics only makes the achievement all the greater. Now that’s what I call a proper actor.
