John Hurt, a British actor who gave compelling depth to desperate, flawed and sometimes monstrously deformed characters in performances that captivated audiences and critics for more than five decades, has died. 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. 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. “I had a very high voice and was quite small — and was rather pretty in those days,” he later told the Scotsman newspaper.

Source: thestar January 28, 2017 03:44 UTC