ExcitingAds! Bob Hoskins | The Guardian
Theatre in the Roundhouse: Berkoff, Warhol and an age of experimentation – in pictures
Images courtesy of the Roundhouse
London’s Roundhouse is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Since reopening 10 years ago it’s staged a fine lineup of music and performing arts. Here, revisit some of the shows that were staged in its first wave of activity, from the late 1960s to the early 80s, when productions by The Living Theatre, Ken Tynan and Prospect were put on in between gigs by some of rock’s biggest stars
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14/10/2016
The Long Good Friday/Mona Lisa review – captivating visions of London’s underworld
Philip French
(John Mackenzie, 1980/Neil Jordan, 1986; Arrow DVD/Blu-ray, 18)
Bob Hoskins became an actor by accident when he accompanied a friend to an audition at London’s leftwing Unity theatre in 1969, and achieved TV stardom as the doomed travelling salesman in Dennis Potter’s Pennies From Heaven. In 1980, he became an international star in Scottish director John Mackenzie’s The Long Good Friday, his first major screen role, as the East End gangster Harold Shand who dreams of transforming his minor criminal empire into a legitimate enterprise by rejuvenating London’s decaying docklands and playing host to the 1988 Olympics. Hoskins’s Shand was compared favourably with Edward G Robinson’s seminal Little Caesar of 1931.
Related: Bob Hoskins: a career in pictures
Both characters are men of extreme violence whose sympathetic sides are gradually revealed as the films progress
Related: Bob Hoskins remembered by Helen Mirren
Related: First the gangsters, then the bankers: how The Long Good Friday foretold the future
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26/7/2015
The Long Good Friday review – sheer, ground-breaking brilliance
Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
A superb script and great turns from Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren are the making of John Mackenzie’s classic London gangland thriller
“What I’m looking for is someone who can contribute to what England has given to the world: culture, sophistication, genius – a little bit more than an ’ot dog, know what I mean?” John Mackenzie’s classic British thriller, from a rip-roaring script by Barrie Keeffe, nearly went straight to TV and only ended up in cinemas thanks to the intervention of George Harrison’s HandMade Films. Today it stands as a prophetic classic, as groundbreaking as Get Carter, as quotable as Withnail & I (“Shut up you long streak of paralysed piss”).
Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren are magnificent as the lord and lady of their underworld manor, attempting to develop London Docklands in a pre-Canary Wharf world, caught between American investors and IRA bombs. Phil Meheux’s camera captures the city on the brink of international change, while Keeffe’s script scratches away at Europe, the free market and the property boom with uncanny prescience. To cap it all, Francis Monkman’s synthy, saxy theme remains nail-bitingly catchy. Sheer brilliance.
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21/6/2015
Why you should watch The Long Good Friday this week – video review
Peter Bradshaw and Henry Barnes
The Long Good Friday, the British gangster classic starring Bob Hoskins as London kingpin Harold Shand, is getting re-released in UK cinemas this week. Peter Bradshaw explains why John Mackenzie’s film, which also featured a young Helen Mirren as Harold’s girlfriend, is worth a butchers this week Continue reading…
18/6/2015
The Long Good Friday review – classic Brit gangster melodrama
Peter Bradshaw
Bob Hoskins’ ruthless East End geezer has big plans for London’s docklands in John Mackenzie’s prescient 80s tale of hubris and revenge
“This country’s a worse risk than Cuba! It’s a banana republic!” That is how Britain is brusquely described in the classic Brit gangster melodrama from 1980, now on rerelease, written by Barrie Keeffe and directed by John Mackenzie. It features a criminal property developer in trouble with rich Americans and the IRA. (A modern-day remake would turn them into Russians and Islamic State.) The film has dated a bit, but it’s surprising how very cleverly it intuits the property boom of London in 2015, and its yearning to be at the centre of a globalised economy, while at the same time absorbing both 70s drear and 80s aspiration. Bob Hoskins (below) is East End geezer Harold Shand – pop-eyed, nervy and insecure about his imminent big break – with plans for a legitimate real estate empire in the London docklands, inspired by reports that the 1988 Olympics will be sited there. First he has to impress a possible American investor, who arrives at the very moment a gang war erupts. Helen Mirren is Harold’s testy, tasty posh girlfriend. The film is notably worldly and tolerant on the subject of gay sex. On the issue of race it’s dodgier, though Shand is supposed to be racist. Hoskins’ bullish, black-comic Napoleonism makes this movie: pugnacious, sentimental, a cockney Cagney.
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18/6/2015
First the gangsters, then the bankers: how The Long Good Friday foretold the future
Danny Leigh
The classic thriller predicted the rise of Thatcherism and the transformation of London’s Docklands into an area of unbridled commerce. For the re-release of the film, I revisited the streets where mobsters once ran wild
At the start of The Long Good Friday, Harold Shand flew in on Concorde. Shand was old-school: a London ganglord played by Bob Hoskins, back home after a New York business trip to find his empire being gutted.
Now, to revisit Harold’s world, I’m listening to the driverless hum of the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), gently jolting through east London above the endless juliet balconies of new-build flats. Neither the DLR nor the flats were here in June 1979, when Hoskins and director John Mackenzie started work on a modestly scaled British crime thriller that would become one of the most darkly momentous films that Britain ever made. So, on another sunlit early summer day, I wanted to see how the London of the film had changed; to splice then with now.
Related: The Long Good Friday: ‘a truly great 1980 state-of-the-nation movie’
Related: John Mackenzie obituary
Related: Bob Hoskins, one of Britain’s best-loved actors, dies aged 71
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18/6/2015
The Long Good Friday: ‘a truly great 1980 state-of-the-nation movie’
John Patterson
The classic gangster thriller is a fitting vision of Thatcher’s Britain, with Bob Hoskins as Harold Shand, the quotable cockney mobster who loses it all
“For 10 years we’ve had peace, and now there’s been an ERUPTION!”
Oh, Harold Shand and his best-laid plans. The East End gangster kingpin is a true spirit-of-the-blitz Little Englander, “a businessman with a sense of history, and also a Londoner”, seeking to shift his thriving criminal empire into legit – or semi-legit – business concerns. He’s dependent upon the New York mafia to help him corner the redevelopment of his own youthful stamping grounds, east London’s Docklands, with a view toward cashing in on a mooted 1988 London Olympics.
Related: Why I’d like to be … Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday
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15/6/2015
Joan Rivers snubbed by Oscars In Memoriam tribute
Guardian film
Annual rollcall of Hollywood’s most notable departed fails to find room for comic, actor and fashion analyst
Oscars 2015 – live!
The comedian Joan Rivers, whose cutting remarks about the fashion fails of Oscar nominees were a staple of red-carpet coverage, was unexpectedly absent from the 2015 ceremony’s commemoration of notable deaths.
Though the academy found room to mention the likes of Gabriel Marcia Márquez and Maya Angelou, alongside more expected industry figures such as Mickey Rooney, Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, Rivers – who died on 4 September last year, was left out.
No Joan Rivers. #Oscars #EpicFail
In Memoriam. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/mHb8hHhYln
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22/2/2015
Tribute paid to Bob Hoskins at 2015 Oscars
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
The British actor, left out of Bafta’s own tributes this year, was one of the departed stars acknowledged at this year’s Academy awards
Oscars 2015 – live!
Bob Hoskins, the salt of the earth British actor who made a successful jump to Hollywood, was remembered during the 2015 Academy awards – in contrast to this year’s Baftas, where he was left out of the list of tributes.
Bafta responded to the snub by saying they’d included him in their tributes at their television awards – but while he first appeared in Dennis Potter’s TV series Pennies From Heaven, film was where Hoskins really made his name, with significant roles in the US as well as the UK.
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22/2/2015
Bafta defends Bob Hoskins in memoriam omission
Ben Child
British Academy explains that Hoskins already featured in TV Baftas ceremony as Hoskins’ daughter adds to Twitter backlash
Bafta organisers have defended their decision to exclude Bob Hoskins from the annual in memoriam segment of Sunday’s broadcast following widespread criticism.
Hoskins was omitted in favour of Hollywood stars such as Lauren Bacall, Harold Ramis, Mickey Rooney and Robin Williams, all of whom also died in the past 12 months. The move sparked anger on Twitter, with comic David Baddiel suggesting it was “symbolic of the erasure in modern times of the working-class actor”. But the British Academy said in a statement that the omission was pre-planned because Hoskins’ life was celebrated during an obituaries package at its television awards in May.
“Bafta features individuals in televised obituaries only once, sadly due to the number of people we’d like to recognise at any one time, and that means difficult decisions have to be made as to which ceremony they should be included in,” said the organisation in a statement.
Thanks to everyone who’s expressed dismay that Dad wasn’t mentioned in the #Bafta obituaries. But he wouldn’t have cared. #bobhoskins
#bobhoskins needed no external validation, he knew his worth and was confident about his contribution to the industry.
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10/2/2015
Baftas under fire for forgetting Bob Hoskins’s death
Ben Child
The omission of Bob Hoskins from the In Memoriam section of last night’s Baftas has led to outrage and accusations of snobbery on Twitter, while others highlight absence of Rik Mayall
Bafta organisers have come under fire for failing to include the late Bob Hoskins, who died in April, in the awards ceremony’s annual In Memoriam segment.
Hoskins, who won the best actor Bafta in 1986 for Neil Jordan neo-noir Mona Lisa, was omitted in favour of Hollywood stars such as Lauren Bacall, Harold Ramis, Mickey Rooney and Robin Williams, all of whom also died in the past 12 months.
Related: Baftas 2015: 10 things we learned
The omission of Bob Hoskins in the BAFTA remembrance montage seems symbolic of the erasure in modern times of the working-class actor.
I think #BAFTA owe the family of Bob Hoskins a major, grovelling apology. Scandalously ignored tonight.
Enjoyed the BAFTAs, albeit often for the wrong reasons. But Bob Hoskins snub was outrageous.
Very disappointing that #Bafta failed to mention Bob Hoskins and Rik Mayall in their tribute segment.
Why no #RikMayall in @BAFTA ‘s memoriam section? They have his passing on their website. http://t.co/GB3mbpiw0x
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9/2/2015
Baftas pay tribute to Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall
Guardian film
The legacy of the stars and film-makers who died in 2014, who also include Richard Attenborough and Mike Nichols, has been recognised in a video tribute at this year’s British Academy film awards
Some of Hollywood and the UK’s most beloved actors have had tributes paid to them at this year’s Bafta ceremony, after their deaths in the previous year.
Despite a lack of truly great roles later in his life, Robin Williams’s comic gifts were unparalleled. In films like Mrs Doubtfire and Good Morning Vietnam he perfected a hilariously antic, malleable style, but also showed he could play it eerily straight in Insomnia and Good Will Hunting.
Related: Robin Williams remembered: ‘A remarkable performer, a brutal shock’
Related: Bob Hoskins remembered by Helen Mirren
Related: Luise Rainer: a life in clips
Related: Mike Nichols: a director of zeitgeist in every decade | Peter Bradshaw
Related: Memories of Richard Attenborough | @guardianletters
Related: Lauren Bacall: 14 of her best quotes
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8/2/2015
Cathy Tyson: ‘Bob Hoskins helped me be unafraid as an actress’
Interview by Ursula Kenny
The Mona Lisa star on playing Marie Curie, founding a theatre company and working with her musician son
In February, you’ll be playing Marie Curie in Alan Alda’s play Radiance, which is as much about the scandal her relationship with a colleague caused in belle epoque Paris as her achievements as a scientist…
She was a very strong woman but the love affair has been very painful to read about. She was hounded and judged and it made her ill. I don’t know how she survived. I also read about her upbringing in Warsaw, how the Poles were treated by the Russians. The determination of that woman and the family that she came from… obviously she was a genius as well. I find theatre amazing – where it takes me. Over Christmas, I bought myself a telescope and a microscope. I thought: “I’m nearly 50. This is great.”
Your big break came aged 21, when you were cast in the Neil Jordan film Mona Lisa, along with Bob Hoskins. How do you feel about it now?
The characters were quite incongruous [she played a prostitute]. I loved it though. Our country is not filmed enough and I feel immense pride [about it]. When Bob died, I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He invited me to a party and I wasn’t able to go and I was sad that I missed that opportunity to be with him. I owe a lot to Bob in the sense that he helped me to be unafraid to reach feelings as an actress.
Related: Observer review: Obsessive Genius by Barbara Goldsmith
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18/1/2015
Bob Hoskins remembered by Helen Mirren
Helen Mirren
26 October 1942–29 April 2014
Helen Mirren, who first worked with Bob Hoskins on The Long Good Friday, recalls a vital presence, a magnetic actor fizzing with energy, and a true mensch
See the Observer’s obituaries of 2014 in full
Lauren Bacall remembered by Terry Hands
There is a great Yiddish word, a mensch. It means a stand-up guy, someone to rely upon, someone who won’t let you down. Bob Hoskins was just that, a mensch.
You wouldn’t think it, but actually we had a lot in common. Both raised in London of lower-middle-class atheist, communist parents. Neither of us could afford to go to drama school, so found our way into the acting profession by other means. However, I was the one with the genuine BK [before Krays] East End gangster for an uncle.
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21/12/2014
Super Mario Bros, out now on DVD
Charlie Lyne
‘Super Mario Bros debuted to the kind of critical mauling normally reserved for Nazi propaganda films’
Towards the end of his life, Bob Hoskins granted an interview to the Guardian in which he was asked to name the worst job he’d ever done, his biggest disappointment, and the one thing he would change if given the opportunity to edit his past. To all three questions, he replied simply, “Super Mario Brothers”.
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7/11/2014
Why I’d like to be … Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday
Tim Cooke
I don’t want to hang anyone from a meat hook, but I need a bit of Harold Shand’s authority. He’s a man who gets things done
• Why I’d like to be … Tim Curry in Legend
• Why I’d like to be … Toni Servillo in The Great Beauty
• Why I’d like to be … Goldie Hawn as Private Benjamin
Shuffling from guest to guest on the deck of his extravagant yacht, Harry Shand exudes charm and confidence. “I’m not a politician; I’m a businessman with a sense of history,” he says. But he’s more than that: he’s a leader, a man with vision. He’s an innovator with the run of the docks and a clear view of the future. He’s ambitious, charismatic, uncompromising. He’s the king of the East End. For me, this rugged Cockney geezer is the ultimate working-class antihero.
Sipping Bloody Marys in the glare of the sleeping Docklands, as if on the banks of the French Riviera, Harry shows that he’s a man of ideas. With Tower Bridge looming overhead, he explains to a party of “true friends” and business associates his plans to steamroll London into the next decade and a new age of prosperity. He wants to renovate the landscape and revitalise the capital’s spirit. He’s got local pride and noble intent. Of course, he’s a gangster, too; a villain of the highest order.
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3/7/2014
Letters: Bob Hoskins and I slept in empty buses in a Jerusalem bus depot
Paddy Ryan, Eric and Helen Bramsted
Paddy Ryan writes: I met Bob Hoskins in Israel in 1965. Like me, he had landed up on a kibbutz on the edge of the Gaza Strip. Volunteering for work there was a way of getting food and shelter. Bob wanted not only to act, but to write: his luggage consisted of a rucksack and a typewriter. We became friends and made a number of trips around the country. His gift of the gab was phenomenal. As a result, we dined with a senior Israeli official from the ministry of transport and later with a Druze Arab family on the Lebanese border. And we slept in empty buses in a Jerusalem bus depot at the invitation of some drivers.
We travelled back to England together in March 1966, with financial help from our respective families. I introduced Bob to a former work colleague of mine, Manny Goldstein, who was an officer of Unity Theatre in north London, and he began to act, as an amateur, there a few months later. He later joined auditions for a professional company, as he described it later, on the spur of the moment, and his career was born.
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14/5/2014
Hoskins the hero | @guardianletters
Guardian Staff
An indication of Bob Hoskins’ humanity and confidence as a stage actor (Report, 30 April) was shown during a performance of The Duchess of Malfi I saw at the Roundhouse in London. A woman in the audience had an epileptic seizure, and Bob Hoskins calmly suggested the action of play be stopped while she was given medical assistance. When she had been removed, he returned in character straight back to the action of the stage, which had reached a very violent point in the play, as if nothing had happened. What an actor he was and he will be sorely missed.
Anita Gray
London
• RIP Bob Hoskins. Best remembered for the beautifully crafted BBC television series On the Move, with Donald Gee, in the late 70s. Fifty 10-minute episodes that focused, sympathetically and with subtle humour, on coping with aspects of illiteracy.
Harry Chalton
Birmingham
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5/5/2014
After Bob Hoskins, it’s curtains for working-class actors these days | Barbara Ellen
Barbara Ellen
Bob Hoskins had a rich and varied career that would not happen now as upper-class men get all the good parts
RIP, Bob Hoskins – extraordinary actor and, by all accounts, decent cove. In a wider sense, Hoskins’s death raises fresh questions about his legacy as a working-class actor – in that he actually got to leave a legacy, in the form of a canon of remarkable and (crucially) varied work spanning 40 years. Jump forward a few decades and how many British working-class actors will have had such chances?
When people comment along the lines that we will never see Hoskins’s like again, they are rightly referring to his acting, but it could just as easily be a statement about his class. Outside designated zones such as soap-land, or whatever Shane Meadows, Noel Clarke or Paul Abbott might be doing, working-class actors are becoming practically invisible, the ghosts of the industry, rarely getting the opportunities truly to prove themselves.
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3/5/2014
Bob Hoskins appreciation: ‘He was fun, likable, generous, warm and clever’
Dexter Fletcher
Actor and director Dexter Fletcher pays tribute to the much-loved star, who died on Wednesday, aged 71
Actor and director Dexter Fletcher remembers his friend Bob Hoskins, with whom he appeared in The Long Good Friday and The Raggedy Rawney
I first met Bob Hoskins at a party when I was nine. It was good to connect with the man from On the Move, in which he played a character who couldn’t read. He was likable and open, just like on the telly. A few years later, we worked together on The Long Good Friday. For me, as a child actor, it was an inspirational lesson in acting and one that will stay with me for ever.
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