Bob Hoskins

Robert William Hoskins (26 October 1942 – 29 April 2014) was an English actor.[1] His work included lead roles in Pennies from Heaven (1978), The Long Good Friday (1980), Mona Lisa (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Mermaids (1990), and Super Mario Bros. (1993), and supporting performances in Brazil (1985), Hook (1991), Nixon (1995), Enemy at the Gates (2001), Mrs. Henderson Presents (2005), A Christmas Carol (2009), Made in Dagenham (2010), and Snow White and the Huntsman (2012). He also directed two feature films.

Hoskins received the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his role in Mona Lisa. He was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the same role. In 2009, Hoskins won an International Emmy Award for Best Actor for his appearance on the BBC One drama The Street. In 2012, Hoskins retired from acting due to Parkinson's disease, and he died from pneumonia on 29 April 2014, at age 71.

Early life
Hoskins was born in Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk, on 26 October 1942 to Robert Hoskins, a bookkeeper and lorry driver, and Elsie (née Hopkins) Hoskins, a cook and nursery school teacher.[2][3] His grandmother was Romani.[4] From two weeks old he was brought up in Finsbury Park, London.[5] He attended Stroud Green Secondary School where he was written off as stupid on account of his dyslexia.[6] He left school at 15 with a single O-Level and worked as a porter, lorry driver, plumber and window cleaner. He started but did not complete a 3-year accountancy course.[7][8] He spent half a year in Israel on a kibbutz, and two years in Syria tending the camels of a Bedouin tribe.[8]

Career
Hoskins' acting career began in 1968 at the Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, in a production of Romeo and Julietin which he portrayed a servant named Peter.[9]A year later, while waiting in the bar at Unity Theatre, London, for his friend the actor Robert Frost, Hoskins found himself being auditioned for a play after being handed a script and told "you're next."[10] His audition was successful and Frost became his understudy. Frost considered Hoskins "a natural", recalling that "he just got up on stage and was brilliant."[11]

His first major television role was in On the Move (1975–1976), an educational drama series directed by Barbara Derkow intended to tackle adult illiteracy.[12]He portrayed the character Alf Hunt, a removal man who had problems reading and writing. According to producer George Auckland, up to 17 million people watched the series.[13] His breakthrough in television came later in the original BBC version of Dennis Potter's innovative 6-part fantasy-drama Pennies from Heaven (1978), in which he portrayed adulterous sheet music salesman Arthur Parker. He went on to play Iago in Jonathan Miller's BBC Television Shakespeare production of Othello (1981).[14] In 1983 Hoskins voiced an advert for Weetabixand during the late 1980s and early 1990s, he appeared in advertising for British Gas and British Telecom (now BT Group).[15][16] Other television work included Flickers, portraying Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield (1999), and The Wind in the Willows (2006).

British films such as The Long Good Friday (1980) and Mona Lisa (1986) won him the wider approval of critics, the latter film winning him a Cannes Award, Best Actor Golden Globe, BAFTA Awards, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Other works in film included delivering comic turns in Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985); portraying Smee in Hook (1991) and in Neverland (2011); starring opposite Cher in Mermaids (1990); portraying Nikita Khrushchev as a political commissar in Enemy at the Gates (2001); and playing Uncle Bart, the violent psychopathic "owner" of Jet Li in Unleashed (2005; aka Danny The Dog). He had a small role as Pink Floyd's manager in The Wall (1979). He directed two films that he also starred in: The Raggedy Rawney (1988) and Rainbow (1996), and produced Mrs Henderson Presents alongside Norma Heyman, for which he was nominated Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the film.[17]

A high point in his career was portraying private investigator Edward "Eddie" Valiant in the live-action/animated family blockbuster, Who Framed Roger Rabbit(1988). Hoskins was not the first choice for the role; Harrison Ford, Bill Murray, and Eddie Murphy were all considered for the part.[18][19] Film critics, among them Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, agreed that Hoskins was perfect for the role.[20] As his character interacts and makes physical contact with animated characters in the film, Hoskins was required to take mime training courses in preparation. He suffered hallucinations for months after production on the film had ended.[21][22][23] He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won a British Evening Standard Award for his performance.

Hoskins was slated to be the last-minute replacement in case Robert De Nirorefused the role of Al Capone in The Untouchables (1987). When De Niro accepted the part, the director Brian De Palma mailed Hoskins a cheque for £20,000 with a "Thank You" note. Hoskins was moved to call the director and ask if there were any more films he wasn't needed for.[24]

He told The Guardian in 2007 that he regretted starring as Mario in Super Mario Bros. (1993), saying that he was extremely unhappy with the film, greatly angered by his experiences making it, and referring to it as the "worst thing I ever did". He was injured several times on set, spent most of the time with co-star John Leguizamo getting drunk to escape boredom, and had no idea the film was based upon a video game until told so by his son.[8]

In 2007 Hoskins appeared in the music video for Jamie T's single "Sheila". [25] In 2009 he returned to television for Jimmy McGovern's drama serial The Street, playing a publican who opposes a local gangster. For this role he received his only Emmy: Best Actor at the 2010 International Emmys. The 2011 film In Search of La Che features a character, "Wermit", whose every line of dialogue is a quote of Bob Hoskins.[26]

On 8 August 2012 Hoskins announced his retirement from acting having been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2011.[27]

Personal life
In 1967, aged 25, Hoskins spent a short period of time volunteering in kibbutz Zikim in Israel, and also herded camels in Syria.[28][29][30] When asked in an interview which living person he most despised, Hoskins named Tony Blair and said that "he's done even more damage than Thatcher". He despised Blair to the point that he decided in 2010, for the first time in his life, not to vote for Labour, by then led by Gordon Brown.[31][32] He made light of his similarities with film actor Danny DeVito, whom he joked would play him in a film about his life.[33]

With his first wife Jane Livesey, Hoskins had two children named Alex (born 1968) and Sarah (born 1972). With his second wife Linda Banwell, he had two more children named Rosa (born c. 1983) and Jack (born c. 1986).[34]

Illness and death
In August 2012, Hoskins retired from acting after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2011.[35]

On 29 April 2014, he died of pneumonia at a hospital in London, England at age 71.[1][36] He is survived by his second wife Linda Banwell and his four children.[37]

After his death, Robert Zemeckis, the director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, said that Hoskins brought enjoyment to audiences worldwide.[37] Among the actors who paid tribute at his funeral were Stephen Fry, Samuel L. Jackson, and Helen Mirren, who said that "London will miss one of her best and most loving sons".[14][38]