P.H. Moriarty made screen hardmen convincing without much fuss. We value the restraint and physical authority he brought to British crime films, though the repeated casting as gangsters and henchmen often left little else for him to do.
Fi1m perspective
The moustache is distinctive, but it is the stare that makes P.H. Moriarty worth watching. As Razors, the loyal enforcer to Bob Hoskins's gangster in The Long Good Friday (1980), he makes intimidation look like ordinary work. We found him unsettling because that understated manner makes a readiness for violence seem so unremarkable. John Mackenzie puts his steadiness to good use beside Hoskins, whose performance is both funny and frightening. Moriarty helps make the danger credible without competing for the centre of the film.
The early parts point towards the work that followed. In Scum (1979), he plays Mr Hunt, a brutal borstal officer; Razors then established the gangster persona that brought him repeated hardman and henchman roles. There is a limitation here, and it belongs partly to the casting: once an actor can make a threat convincing, scripts can stop asking him for much else. We value how precisely he does the job, while wishing more of the parts had asked for something different.
Guy Ritchie makes that familiarity useful in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). Moriarty's 'Hatchet' Harry Lonsdale, a ruthless porn king and debt collector, gives the tangled crime comedy a convincing source of fear. The sharp casting and cleverly competing plans earn their laughs, even when the camera tricks become tiresome. The characters are thinly written, and Harry benefits from Moriarty's ability to make an intimidating figure credible with little elaboration. There is not much else to discover about him, but the caper needs that threat to work.
The two directors need slightly different things from him. Mackenzie's thriller concerns itself with ambition and money, and Moriarty gives its criminal business a plausible enforcer. Ritchie's comedy needs someone sufficiently intimidating to make all that plotting matter, even when its people scarcely warrant the trouble. We prefer Moriarty in the more substantial company of Hoskins, though there is pleasure in seeing his particular skill put to comic use. Start with The Long Good Friday; keep Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels for an evening when following the plans is entertainment enough.
Biography
P. H. Moriarty was a British character actor known for roles as hard men and gangsters. Born Paul Hugh Moriarty in Deptford, London, he worked as a boxer and docker before entering acting in his late thirties after being discovered by a film crew on the Surrey Commercial Docks.
He made his screen debut in 1978 and gained prominence as Razors in The Long Good Friday (1980). Other notable film roles include Hatchet Harry in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), a hitman in Outland (1981), Jack Tate in Jaws 3-D (1983), and appearances in Quadrophenia (1979), Scum (1979), Patriot Games (1992) and Chaplin (1992). He also portrayed Gurney Halleck in the miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune (2000) and its 2003 sequel.
Moriarty died in London on 2 February 2025, aged 86.
