Bob Hoskins has died.

[pastoralguy]

One of the uk's greatest actors has died aged 71. Very sad news indeed.

No Easter weekend was complete without watching his breakthrough film, 'The Long Good Friday'.

A real loss.

[Bryn]

A bit of a shock, indeed. An actor I very much admired. As I just posted over at r3ok.com:

The Long Good Friday is a true classic, in my view. O.K., Barry Keefe was constrained by Helen Mirren and other cast members to develop his brilliant screenplay to give Victoria the role of the true brains behind Harold. I went to see it several times in the cinema and well remember the very positive and perceptive analytical review it received in Sinn Féin's Republican News.

Having read of the poor quality of the DVD transfers issued under the Anchor Bay legend, I held back from getting it. However, prompted by positive reviews of the 'extras', I ordered the 2 DVD + sound track CD Anchor Bay issue last week (for a pittance). A brief view of the opening scene convinced me to call a halt and order the Studiocanal Blu-ray, which reportedly has a considerably superior transfer to that with speckly digital aliasing found on the Anchor Bay DVD. I await the Blu-ray's arrival by post with bated breath.

Bob Hoskins' wordless communication of Harold Shand's thought processes in the final scene, when he recognises the inevitability of what awaits him at the hands of line-free newcomer Pierce Brosnan, is superb.

RIP Bob indeed.

[Serial_Apologist]

The way it is so frequently the physically strongest-looking that depart before what seems their time never fails to catch me out.

What was the film in which Bob played minder to a call girl, to whom he becomes ineluctably attached? I think that was my favourite of his.

[pastoralguy]

The way it is so frequently the physically strongest-looking that depart before what seems their time never fails to catch me out.

What was the film in which Bob played minder to a call girl, to whom he becomes ineluctably attached? I think that was my favourite of his.

Mona Lisa.

[Serial_Apologist]

Mona Lisa.

That's it - thanks pastoralguy!

[teamsaint]

didn't he do "On the Move", a programme for those with reading difficulties, which went out just before the Big Match (!!) on Sunday PM?

Seemed to be one of those actors that everybody liked.

RIP

[Stillhomewardbound]

It was indeed 'On The Move' when Bob Hoskins first registered on the nation's TV screens. A sunday evening educational tea-time slot intended for a small but persistent sector of the populace that had reached maturity without having properly mastered the skills of reading and writing.

At the heart of the programme was a mini-soap based around two removals men (hence the 'on the move' motif) and their chat in the course of their breaks.

Hoskins's side-kick was the genial and kindly Donald Gee, the figure that Hoskins's everyman character was able to come out to as being illiterate and with each week's instalment the audience gained a sense of the struggle for an adult to come to terms with an ignored disability and find the wherewithal to conquer it.

If Bob Hoskins had never taken on another role in his life it would have mattered not a jot such was the conviction with which he conveyed the dilemma of his character. A feisty, bullish man about town with a shameful, hidden weakness.

I remember one scene when, having enrolled for a reading & writing course, he has to confess to his work-mate that having got there, to the particular school or college, he'd run away in desperation and fear. He explains how the smell of the desks, the noise of the corridors had swelled in his mind and provoked a terrifying flashback. Hoskins put that scene across with such viscerality that I live it in my head to this day, nearly forty years on and never having seen it in the intervening years.

I recall also at this point that there was a two-fold purpose to 'On the Move'. One was to reach out to adults of basic or lesser literacy and urge them to return to education, but just as important was to explain to the majority how and why a minority struggled with skills that were so easily taken for granted. The ethos, I suppose, was some people fall through the net, and in Hoskins we saw not a victim but somebody that could have been ourselves.

Really, that early role was a template for the rest of his career. He always was that Everyman. Not someone you pitied, not someone you ridiculed or laughed at, but the little man that exists in all of us. The dreamer of a song-sheet salesman in Pennies From Heaven, the gangster in The Long Good Friday, the abused henchman in Mona Lisa and the soft-centred butler in Maid In Manhattan.

Hoskins's performances, quite simply, induced audiences into a state of the highest empathy. Bryn's earlier comment about the final scene in The Long Good Friday picks on a defining moment in his career when, as he's been driven away to certain death, his barely contorted face conveys a tragic symphony of emotions. Truly a masterly display of screen acting.

Thanks goodness those many performances will endure across the decades though it might be a long time before such a unique diamond in the rough is uncovered again.

[Stillhomewardbound]

If I can add a footnote to my previous piece, back in the lovely spring of 1976 my father (TP McKenna) was in rehearsals for a production of Shaw's 'The Devils Disciple' at the RSC, then based at their London home at the Aldwych Theatre.

Anyway, when he'd be at the dinner table for the evening mean he would surmise the day and tell us about the company he was working with, the gossip and all that.
We loved to hear that kind of chat and the reports of the repartee. We were children of an actor but not immediately party to that grown-up world, but this time he was telling us tales of a most exceptional member of the company he had quickly bonded with.

The story went that he'd been ejected from the family home at a very early age by a most strict father, after he'd got a local girl in the family way, it was said, and despite next to no education he had ended up in the desert with nomads and the like. He had tried desperately to follow his book-keeper father and master the requirements of accountancy but, as he himself would say, 'I mean, it weren't gonna happen, TP. Know what I mean.'

Now, as it turned out, that production, timed to coincide with the War of Independence bicentennial celebrations, became one of the big theatre hits of the year and for four months my dad and Bob Hoskins shared the same dressing room in happy harmony.

How I remember the press night when a beguiling waif of a boyish girl walked through a packed dressing room to congratulate both my pa and Bob on their performances as everyone looked on and made impersonations of silent goldfish mouthing ... 'Mia Farrow ... Mia farrow ... THAT'S Mia Farrow!!'

Across that miracle summer of '76 my siblings and I used to love calling in on our father and getting a dose of the Hoskins magic. We teased him and called him 'Brains' then. For no better reason than he had new glasses just like the Thunderbirds character, but nonetheless, he loved our cheek.

I suppose, you could say these were the days before he became famous and, in fact, I'd met him again just eighteen months later in the BBC Club at Television Centre, on the very cusp of his fame, as the cast and crew of a new drama were enjoying their wrap party.

That new drama was Dennis Potter's 'Pennies From Heaven' and as soon as that series debuted Bob Hoskins's career was changed irrevocably, and most deservedly too, but never the man.

RIP 'Brains'!

[Nick Armstrong]

Really lovely stuff shb, and RIP Bob Hoskins, a gem of an actor

[Richard Tarleton]

Two more examples of his range - The Raggedy Rawney, which he also directed (1988, the same year as Roger Rabbit) - a strange, atmospheric film about a band nomadic gypsies - anyone else ever see it? - and two years later Mermaids, in which he co-starred with Cher () and a young Winona Ryder.....

The Long Good Friday one of the great thrillers, a spine-chilling film.

[Tevot]

What sad news indeed. Like others the screen roles and performances that stood out for me were, Pennies from Heaven, The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa.

And yes - my very first memories of Bob Hoskins belong to On the Move.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuVmT67LELM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufVe521quok

[amateur51]

Almost all that I wanted to say has been well said by others, even remembering On The Move so well shb

I thought his vulnerability in Mona Lisa was very touching, he & Cathy Tyson knocking sparks off each other.

He appeared in one of the stories contained in the multi-directorial film Paris Je T'aime - I was completely taken by surprise when he appeared on-screen and he played it beautifully, not your typical Hoskins film.

I haven't seen the Australian TV miniseries The Dunera Boys about a dark piece of British history in its relationship with Australia.

Many thanks for all the performances Bob - especially Mrs Henderson Presents in which he appears naked momentarily much to the delight of certain eagle-eyed gerontophiles with slo-mo facilities on their PVRs

[amateur51]

What sad news indeed. Like others the screen roles and performances that stood out for me were, Pennies from Heaven, The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa.

And yes - my very first memories of Bob Hoskins belong to On the Move.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuVmT67LELM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufVe521quok

Oh many thanks for the On The Move clips Tevot - I often hum the music to myself

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh many thanks for the On The Move clips Tevot - I often hum the music to myself

Seconded by me!

[Stillhomewardbound]

How did it go ... 'Life is an open door / just open your eyes and look / and let's make it easy' - approximately!