Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

British acting legend Sir John Hurt has died aged 77.

The actor had been battling cancer for some time, and passed away on January 27. He was known to genre fans for a multiplicity of roles – from the doomed Kane in Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien (a role he “returned” to for Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs in 1987) to the wandmaster Garrick Oliver in the Harry Potter movies. He was the surprise casting as the “unknown” War Doctor for Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary, a part he reprised for Big Finish in a series of audios, the last of which is due to be released next month.

Other genre roles included Winston Smith in 1984 (and Big Brother in a later stage adaptation), the Professor in Hellboy, Adam Sutler in V for Vendetta, and Harold Oxley in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while he provided voice for Aragorn in Ralph Bakshi’s animated The Lord of the Rings, Hazel for the movie of Watership Down, the villain in Disney’s The Black Cauldron, and the Great Dragon in the BBC’s Merlin. One of his last roles was as the eponymous Invisible Man for Big Finish’s adaptation of the H G Wells tale.

His career spanned six decades, with other notable roles including Richard Rich in A Man for All Seasons (1966); Timothy Evans in 10 Rillington Place (1971); Quentin Crisp in A Naked Civil Servant (1975); Caligula in I, Claudius (1976); Max in Midnight Express (1978);  John Merrick in The Elephant Man (1980); Bob Champion in Champions (1984); The Marquis of Montrose in Rob Roy (1995); Porfiry in Crime and Punishment (2002 – after playing the central character Raskolnikov for the BBC in 1979); and Control in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011).

The Big Finish tribute to Sir John can be read here, which now includes tributes from producer David Richardson and executive producer Nicholas Briggs.