John Hurt, a British actor who gave depth to desperate, flawed and sometimes monstrously deformed characters for more than five decades, has died. He was 77.
The actor announced in 2015 that he had pancreatic cancer. His agent confirmed the death to the BBC. No further details were immediately known.
"It was terribly sad today to learn of John Hurt's passing," comic filmmaker Mel Brooks wrote on Twitter. "He was a truly magnificent talent."
After a start on stage, Hurt found his first notable screen role in the Oscar-winning A Man for All Seasons (1966), which starred Paul Scofield as the martyred Englishman Thomas More.
The director, Fred Zinnemann, said he took a gamble casting the largely unknown Hurt as Richard Rich, a young lawyer and More disciple who betrays his mentor.
Hurt appeared in roughly 200 films and TV shows. He embraced mainstream hits, including the Harry Potter series -- he played the wand-maker Ollivander -- as well as more disquieting fare, such as Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape in which he gave, on stage and television, a tour de force depiction of a regretful writer.
Early career highlights in the United Kingdom include the film 10 Rillington Place (1971), as a man of low mental faculties wrongly executed for crimes committed by the British serial killer John Christie, and The Naked Civil Servant (1975), a British TV movie about the gay author and raconteur Quentin Crisp.
In another British miniseries, I, Claudius (1976), Hurt portrayed the Roman emperor Caligula, a mad degenerate who fancies himself a god. Two years later, Hurt received his first Oscar nomination, for his supporting role in Midnight Express as an English junkie abused by guards in a Turkish jail.
Although he lost the supporting Oscar bid to Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter, Hurt had appeared on Hollywood's radar and was cast in Ridley Scott's sci-fi thriller Alien (1979).
Hurt was widely noted for his range, intensity and empathy in portraying the most complicated and outcast lives. David Lynch, who directed the actor in his title role in The Elephant Man (1980), once called Hurt "simply the greatest actor in the world."
In The Elephant Man, Hurt played a Victorian-era Englishman whose grotesque disfigurement led to his years of exploitation as a carnival freak. Hurt underwent six hours of makeup application each day to play Joseph Merrick -- called John in the film -- a man of dignity, tenderness and refinement underneath his deformity.
Hurt's performance garnered an Oscar nomination for a leading role.
He was Jesus at the Last Supper, confused by an intrusive waiter, in Brooks' History of the World: Part I" (1981); Winston Smith, a rebellious employee of the Ministry of Truth, in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), based on the George Orwell book; an omniscient, enigmatic billionaire who funds an astronomer (Jodie Foster) in Contact (1997); and the dictatorial High Chancellor Adam Sutler in the dystopic V for Vendetta (2005).
In 2013, he again turned to TV, guest starring on the 50th-anniversary special for the long-running British series Doctor Who.
As prolific as ever, Hurt recently appeared alongside Natalie Portman in the Oscar-nominated film Jackie as a priest who consoles the recently widowed first lady.
John Vincent Hurt was born in Chesterfield, England, on Jan. 22, 1940.
His personal life was turbulent. He said he suffered from "considerable mood swings" and took pleasure in drinking with legendarily rowdy and bibulous actors such as Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris and Oliver Reed.
An early marriage, to actress Annette Robertson, ended in divorce. His companion of 16 years, French fashion model Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Pierrot, was killed in a horse-riding accident in 1983.
His subsequent marriages to Donna Peacock and Jo Dalton, the mother of his two sons, ended in divorce. In 2005, he wed Anwen Rees-Myers.
Hurt was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2014 for his contributions to drama.
A Section on 01/28/2017