John Hurt Dies After A long Battle With Cancer and an Intestinal Complaint in Recent Years.

 

Survived by his wife of 12 years, Anwen Rees-Myers, he recently starred as a priest in the Oscar nominated biopic of President John F. Kennedy’s widow, Jackie, currently showing in cinemas.
After rising to fame in A Man For All Seasons (1966), some of his most famous roles include the 1979 blockbuster Alien, the TV series I, Claudius in 1976 and starring as Winston Smith in the adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 made the year of the book’s title.



While battling pancreatic cancer in 2015, Sir John - the son of a clergyman - said he did not wish for an afterlife, saying: “I hope I shall have the courage to say, ‘Vroom! Here we go! Let’s become different molecules!”
He also said: “I can’t say I worry about mortality, but it’s impossible to get to my age and not have a little contemplation of it. We’re all just passing time, and occupy our chair very briefly.”


He once described how his friend Sir Laurence Olivier, passed on advice to him, describing: “I remember Olivier, when I was playing the Fool in his King Lear, saying: ‘When it comes to the obituary, they’ll only ever mention three things, probably two, but if you’re lucky three.’
"And of course when he died, they mentioned Richard III, Henry IV and either Marathon Man or Wuthering Heights.

“I mean, if you write your own obituary, I don’t know, they’d take the things that got awards wouldn’t they? So it would be Midnight Express, it would be Elephant Man and Naked Civil Servant probably.”
He reportedly chuckled that he had no objections to the selection, adding: “I won’t be here, I’ll be gone so it’ll be entirely up to them.”