John Hurt Biography (2)

John Hurt is one of Britain's best known, critically acclaimed and most versatile actors. He 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. For the stage, Hurt has also appeared in Pinter's ?The Caretaker, Sean O' Casey's Shadow of a Gunman, Tom Stoppard's Travesties for the RSC and Turgenev's A Month in the Country." More recently he received acclaim for his performance in Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, which was made into a movie directed by Atom Egoyan.

Hurt?s impressive body of television work commenced in 1961 and has included such notable roles as Caligula in I, Claudius, Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and, most memorably, as Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant, for which he received a Best Actor Emmy and a BAFTA Best Television Actor Award. His performance led the real Quentin Crisp to quip that, John Hurt is my representative here on Earth.

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. His other film work includes a trio of roles, 1984, The Hit and Champions, which earned him the Evening Standard Award for Best Actor for 1984. His many film credits include A Man For All Seasons, Alien, Heaven?s Gate, White Mischief, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer?s Stone, The Field, Scandal, Dogville, Rob Roy, Captain Corelli's Mandolin and a critically acclaimed performance in Richard Kwietniowski's Love and Death on Long Island. Hurt also starred in Kwietniowski's Owning Mahowny opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Born in 1940, Hurt attended schools in Kent and Lincoln. He was a stagehand with the Lincoln Repertory and studied Art at St. Martin's School in London before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Hurt currently resides in Wicklow Mountains, Ireland.

Buy more detailed movie star biographies in the Movie Star Bookstore.