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Charles Laughton is a Actor, Director, Scriptwriter, Producer and Additional Writing British born on 30 june 1899 at Scarborough (United-kingdom)

Charles Laughton

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Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 30 june 1899 at Scarborough (United-kingdom)
Death 15 december 1962 (at 63 years) at Hollywood (USA)
Awards Academy Award for Best Actor

Charles Laughton (1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was an English stage and film character actor, director, producer and screenwriter who had a successful career in Hollywood.

Laughton was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death; they had no children.

He played a wide range of classical and modern parts, making a big impact in Shakespeare at the Old Vic. His film career took him to Broadway and then Hollywood, but he also collaborated with Alexander Korda on some of the most notable British films of the era, including The Private Life of Henry VIII.

Laughton, was one of the most recognisable and beloved character actors of his generation, and portrayed everything from monsters and misfits to kings. Among Laughton's biggest film-hits were The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Mutiny on the Bounty, Ruggles of Red Gap, Jamaica Inn, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Big Clock. In his later career, he took up stage directing, notably in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, and George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, in which he also starred. He directed one film, the acclaimed thriller The Night of the Hunter.

Laughton has been seen by some actors as one of the greatest performers of his generation. Sir Daniel Day-Lewis has cited him as one of his inspirations, saying "He was probably the greatest film actor who came from that period of time. He had something quite remarkable. His generosity as an actor, he fed himself into that work. As an actor, you cannot take your eyes off him.

Biography

In 1927, Laughton began a relationship with Elsa Lanchester, at the time a cast mate in a stage play. The two were married in 1929, became US citizens in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death. Over the years, they appeared together in several films, including Rembrandt (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942) and The Big Clock (1948). Lanchester portrayed Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, opposite Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII. They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances in Witness for the Prosecution (1957)—Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won.

Although Laughton's bisexuality has been corroborated by several of his contemporaries and is generally accepted by Hollywood historians, actress Maureen O'Hara, a friend and co-star of Laughton, has disputed the contention that his sexuality was the reason Laughton and Lanchester did not have children. O'Hara claimed Laughton told her that he had wanted children, but that it had not been possible because of a botched abortion that Lanchester had early in her career of performing burlesque. In her own autobiography, Lanchester acknowledged two abortions in her youth — one of the pregnancies purportedly by Laughton — although she didn't mention whether she had been rendered infertile. According to her biographer, Charles Higham, the reason she did not have children was that she did not want any.

Laughton owned a spectacular estate on the bluffs above Pacific Coast Highway at 14954 Corona Del Mar in Pacific Palisades. The property suffered a landslide in 1944, alluded to by Bertolt Brecht in his poem "Garden in Progress".