Thursday, Aug 21, 2008
He's been a killer, an Elephant Man and an alien-infested, chain-smoking astronaut. And through it all, John Hurt has never been anything less than irresistible.
Mar 18, 2004 | John Hurt shouldn't work as a love object -- it is counterintuitive to the general rules of attraction. His countenance is fishy and bizarre. He has dark, verminous little eyes, a smirky little mouth full of nicotine-varnished teeth, and that British complexion that evokes a poached worm. Even in his early films, he has eye bags and looks like he put on a face that was at the very bottom of his laundry basket. His body, when it isn't a little overindulged around the abdomen, is scrawny. He has never, in any role, looked particularly masculine. The characters he plays are generally weak, immoral, murderous, slimy or insane. Yet to gaze upon John Hurt, in almost any role, is to feel a drooly adoration; he is irresistible.
Men and women both want him, though for what, exactly, I'm not sure -- it's hard to imagine being physically comfortable enough near him to actually touch him. I imagine that his fans wouldn't want to molest him so much as respectfully throw back icy shots of his distilled essence -- a toast, a swallow, and a wincing, hearty aurgh! Hurt is a toxic luxury, delicious as a nasty fruit brandy -- an after-dinner vice of giddy, overpriced pleasure. I attempt, Dear Reader, to deliver you a 180-proof jigger of the exquisite John Hurt. Serve chilled, in the skull of your enemy.
Born in 1940 in Shirebrook, England, Hurt lived until the age of 12 in a small coal-mining village named Woodville. He has described his childhood as unhappy, and his young self as "solitary" and "negative." His father was a Church of England clergyman who thought going to films was "common"; Hurt didn't see a movie until he was 8. He hated what he called his "high anglo-Catholic" prep school, but it did introduce him to his vocation, at age 9, when he was cast as the girl in Maeterlinck's "The Bluebird." Playing the role, as he told Geoff Andrew of the U.K. Guardian (an interview from which I quote extensively in this article) gave Hurt "an extraordinary feeling that I was in the place that I was meant to be."
Hurt had been studying painting at St. Martin's School of Art when he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). This was, most likely, where he was taught his chuggingly rhythmic, immaculate diction; Hurt punches his consonants with the contrast and precision of a teletype -- try to repeat one of his monologues beat for beat, and you'll see what a master tongue-twister he is -- he could probably do macramé with a cherry stem. While still at RADA, Hurt scored his first film role, in something called "The Wild And The Willing" (1962).
His personal life, off-screen, is remarkable (to me) in that contrary to the wry, dry, and effete persona that seems to be his neutral-mode, he is apparently not gay. He appears to love beautiful women, and somewhat steadfastly, if you don't count the handful of divorces, which are generally attributed to his affection for alcohol. He was married from 1962 to 1964 to Annette Robertson, then spent 16 years with model Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Pierrot, a relationship that ended when she died in a riding accident. He was married six years to Donna Peacock, then to Jo Dalton, the mother of his sons Nicolas and Alexander. Hurt, who has referred to himself nonchalantly as "an old drunk," has been publicly sober since 2000; he was most recently paired with Sarah Owen.
Sexual preference notwithstanding, Hurt has always been publicly gay-friendly to the point of speculation. He was one of the earliest English luminaries to champion the AIDS cause; he continually refers to the "Death in Venice"-like "Love and Death in Long Island" as one of the favorite films in his extensive list of credits, and he freely admits to having seen "Jules et Jim" on seven consecutive Sundays -- not exactly rugby, these happily un-macho attachments -- the androgynous question-mark seems to be a brooch Hurt likes to subversively sport on his lapel.
The blurry sexuality Hurt projects is perhaps a result of playing Quentin Crisp so wonderfully in "The Naked Civil Servant" (1975). This film, like a lizard dropped down ski-pants, like a taxi ride through Elsa Schiaparelli 's closet, like a faceful of beautiful pansies, is pure joy. While Hurt's flamboyant poofery is divine, it is Crisp's plucky courage to be so scandalously different at a time when such things were illegal and dangerous that is really affecting; the Dietrich-like dignity with which he suffers fools, the allergy for taking himself too seriously. It is a plum role: a wit, a flower; the weakest of men, externally speaking, but inside, an unshakable tower of firmest meringue.
I first fell in love with John Hurt when I was a kid, watching "I, Claudius" (1976) with my mother on Masterpiece Theatre. Caligula couldn't have done Caligula better than John Hurt did Caligula. How do you make the Idi Amin of ancient Rome come off like a lovable rascal?
Hurt told the Guardian of one contribution he made to the role: "I remember there was a bit of a conflict ... I climbed into bed with my grandmother and thought that this would really be a rather good idea and Herbie (Wise, the director) was getting slightly worried about how far it was going. But after many conversations and discussions we said, Well, how far can Caligula go? And the answer was pretty much as far as possible."
This is one of the handful of times in Hurt's career that he had a script equal to his talent. I live for such lines as this Jack Pulman zinger, when Caligula watches his grandmother die, and gleefully condemns her to hell:
"A goddess?" (Beat. Pleasant, boyish grin.) "... And what makes you think a filthy, smelly old woman like you could be a goddess?"
While Hurt steals virtually every scene he's in by letting Caligula take belligerent joy in causing the extreme discomfort of his peers, my favorite scene of all time is when he rouses his terrified underlings from bed in the middle of the night and forces them to watch a musical number featuring himself as the Rosy-Fingered Goddess, covered with lipstick and syphilis sores. No drag act has ever been performed with more graceless conviction. Hurt's deadpan rivals those of Buster Keaton and John Belushi. It is comic heroin.
Hurt was, by 1978, widely beloved by TV audiences (he has received two British Academy of Film and Television Arts awards in his life, for British TV excellence) but seized mainstream attention for his role as Max, the wise old junkie in "Midnight Express"; this role earned him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, probably because it is some of the simplest work of his career. The 1979 BBC miniseries "Crime and Punishment," though a little difficult to find, has recently been issued on DVD and is the greatest of entertainment luxuries: Dostoyevsky dramatized by Jack Pulman. It is a literally breathtaking piece of dramatic art; at the end shot, which is nothing but a close-up of Hurt's face, crying, I realized that I had been holding my breath until the credits rolled.
Get Salon in your mailbox!