Charles Laughton
born: 01-07-1899
birth place: Scarborough, England
died: 15-12-1962
English actor Charles Laughton was born in Yorkshire in England, the son of hoteliers Eliza Conlon and Robert Laughton.
Attending the Jesuit Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, Laughton excelled at mathematics, but was more taken by a brief experience of theatre.
Laughton entered the family business in 1915, before the First World War took him into the British Army. Returning in 1919, he worked in the family hotel – The Victoria Inn – for five years before enrolling at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1925.
Making his London West End debut in Gogol’s ‘The Government Inspector’ in 1926, he scored a number of successes at the Old Vic and on Broadway, before his film debut, ‘The Old Dark House’ in 1932.
Laughton played a number of terrifying early roles such as Nero in ‘Sign of the Cross’ and an evil doctor in ‘Island of Lost Souls’(both 1932). The next year, he transferred his stage performance of ‘The Private Life of Henry VIII’ to film in 1933, and won a Best Actor Oscar.
He was nominated for another Oscar in 1935 for ‘Mutiny on the Bounty.
After the Second World War, Laughton returned to the stage in Brecht’s ‘Life of Galileo’, which he co-directed. He made ‘Don Juan in Hell’ in 1951 and ‘The Caine Mutiny’ in 1954 (from which a young cockney film actor called Maurice Micklewhite was to get his name), and appeared in various Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespeare productions.
At this stage of his career, he also took to the road on story-telling and oral performance tours.
Laughton’s career as film director reached its peak with the classic, ‘Night of The Hunter’, in 1955. Oscar nominated once more for ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ in 1957, he appeared in ‘Spartacus’ in 1960 and 1962’s ‘Advice and Consent’.
Tormented throughout his career by suppressed homosexuality and self-loathing, Laughton died in Hollywood on the 15th December 1962.
