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John Hurt

John Vincent Hurt, CBE (born 22 January 1940) is a two-time Academy Award-nominated, triple BAFTA Award- and Golden Globe-winning English actor, well known for his portrayals of Thomas W. Kane in Alien and John Merrick in The Elephant Man. He is one of England's best-known, most prolific and sought-after actors, and has had a versatile career spanning over 40 years. Other notable film credits include A Man for All Seasons, The Naked Civil Servant, 1984, Rob Roy, Hellboy and V for Vendetta. He is also highly respected for his many Shakespearean roles.[2] His character's demise in Alien is generally regarded as one of the most chilling and unforgettable deaths in cinematic history.

Hurt was born in Shirebrook near Chesterfield Derbyshire, the son of Phyllis (née Massey), an amateur actress and engineer, and Arnould Herbert Hurt, a mathematician who became an Anglican clergyman.[4] Hurt has an older brother, Michael, a monk based in Ireland, and 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. Stephen at Woodville in South Derbyshire and remained there until 1959.

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'.[citation needed] At the age of eight he decided 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.

His father moved to St. Aidan church in Cleethorpes and Hurt 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."[citation needed] 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 however he won a scholarship to RADA where he trained for two years. He was then cast in small roles on TV.

In 1962 Arnould Hurt left his parish in Cleethorpes to become headmaster of St Michael's College in the Latin American country of Belize. In that same year Hurt first performed on the London stage and married the actress Annette Robertson. The marriage ended in 1964. At the time Hurt was performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1967 he began his longest relationship with the French model Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Pierrot. It lasted fifteen years and ended with her untimely death in a riding accident on 26 January 1983.

Hurt married for the second time on the 6th of September 1984 to Texas 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. 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: Alexander John Vincent (born 6 February 1990) and Nicholas Dalton (born 5 February 1993). This marriage ended in 1996. At one point Hurt was involved with Sarah Owen, twenty years his younger and with whom he lived in County Wicklow Ireland. In March of 2005 Hurt married his fourth wife, advertising film producer Ann Rees Meyers.

Hurt's mother died in 1975 and his father lived until November 1999 when he died at the age of 95.

In January of 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 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. However the genealogical evidence uncovered seemed to contradict the family legend, rendering the 'suggestion' doubtful.