John Hurt

Listen to the rasp in John Hurt’s voice: it suggests someone who has had a difficult time before he has said much at all. He could give a damaged character dignity without making suffering look noble. Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), with Hurt as Kane, puts that quality to use within a crew whose members are not always fully written. We felt tense well before the shocks arrived, because Scott lets the ship’s confinement and the patient build-up do their work. Hurt helps make those people worth worrying about.

The outsider was already there in Quentin Crisp, his television role in The Naked Civil Servant (1975). Midnight Express (1978), in which he plays an addict, helped bring him an international audience. By The Elephant Man (1980), he was giving John Merrick dignity through extensive prosthetics. For Merrick, the physical and vocal transformation was demanding. We value the care he takes to keep the person interesting when the suffering might easily have been enough to secure our sympathy.

He did not need to be the centre of a film to be useful to it. In Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), he plays John Scholfield in a funny, unsettling Western. Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer supply much of the warmth; Hurt is part of the company rather than the chief reason to watch. The long pauses sometimes ask for more patience than they repay. We recommend it with that reservation, rather than pretending that a good cast can make every pause worthwhile.

The reservation about Hurt is the repeated casting: another outsider, another tormented man, another part that required him to suffer. He varied the performances, but the expectation could become predictable. His narration for Lars von Trier also matters here: that rasp was useful beyond roles that asked him to suffer visibly. There is wit in the voice, and we would not choose only the bruising parts as an introduction. Start with Alien, then try Dead Man when there is no hurry.