Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton won an Oscar for playing Henry VIII, directed exactly one film, and it is a masterpiece nobody wanted at the time. He was a Scarborough hotelkeeper's son who served in the trenches, trained at RADA against his family's wishes, and built a career on parts other leading men would not touch: Nero, Quasimodo, Captain Bligh, Rembrandt, the title role in The Private Life of Henry VIII in 1933, for which he became the first actor in a British film to win an Academy Award. He was heavy, considered himself ugly, and was homosexual in a period when that was a criminal matter in Britain; the marriage to Elsa Lanchester lasted thirty-three years and she wrote about it frankly afterwards. In 1955 he directed The Night of the Hunter from James Agee's screenplay - a fairy tale about a murderous preacher hunting two children down a river, shot in expressionist black and white. It was a commercial and critical failure, he never directed again, and it is now routinely listed among the best American films ever made. He also toured the United States for years giving solo readings from the Bible, Dickens and Shaw to enormous audiences, and directed Brecht's Galileo on stage with Brecht present. Robert Mitchum, cast as the preacher, said Laughton was the best director he ever worked with. Laughton became an American citizen in 1950. Elsa Lanchester played the Bride of Frankenstein and outlived him by twenty-four years. He played Captain Bligh opposite Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty and the two men disliked each other throughout the shoot. His last film was Advise and Consent in 1962, made while he was dying of cancer.

• Lived: 1899 CE – 1962 CE
• Nationality: British
• Roles: artist