John Hurt

Sometimes it is difficult to convey the scope or impact of an actor's career but there's no doubting the range and consistent cultural relevance of John Hurt's life and work. Just naming some of the many films and television productions he was involved in reveals the diversity and significance of his performances.

When your first major role is in the sixties big hitter A Man For All Seasons it's a safe bet that you will be able to hold your head high amongst the highest echelons of the profession thereafter. Which is exactly what Hurt did in a career spanning six decades. He first made a name for himself playing outsiders and idiosyncratic characters, many of them real life figures such as Quentin Crisp, John Merrick (The Elephant Man), Caligula and Bob Champion. Over the course of his life he also appeared in some of the biggest and most iconic franchises of his times: Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Alien, Hellboy and Doctor Who.

Almost forty years ago his death scene in the first Alien film became an instant classic, one parodied and emulated to this day. His portrayal of Winston Smith in the 1984 production of, er, Nineteen Eighty-Four, brought Orwell's revolutionary protagonist so perfectly to life that his depiction of the Fascist dictator Adam Sutler in 2005's V For Vendetta seems like a second betrayal of Winston's original intent to expose the totalitarian violence of Big Brother.

With his gravelly tones, Hurt possessed a voice most of us emulate when we're phoning work pretending to be unwell when in fact we want to stay home and watch daytime television in our pants. Having such a distinctive set of pipes never prevented him from taking on a cornucopia of different characters. If younger audiences will largely think of him as wand maker Olivander or the previously unseen 'War Doctor' in the BBC's greatest ever science fiction series he is unlikely to have cared too much nor demanded they investigate his more challenging work such as Krapp's Last Tape or his original portrayal of Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant.

The world has lost not just a consummate actor but also a dedicated professional and a disarmingly nice, normal human being, a rare instance indeed in a career often dominated by self-important show-offs. I bet he did know what Cup-a-Soup is.