A statement issued on his behalf said: “He wishes to thank all the great and brilliant people he has worked with over the years, and all of his fans who have supported him during a wonderful career. Bob is now looking forward to his retirement with his family, and would greatly appreciate that his privacy be respected at this time.”
Hoskins, one of Britain’s best-loved actors, known for his gruff bonhomie, has been working for more than 30 years. He first found fame on the small screen in Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven, and then in cinemas as a London gangster-turned-businessman in The Long Good Friday (1980).
Hoskins had leading roles in Brazil (1985), Mona Lisa (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and Mermaids (1990) and Super Mario Bros (1993) – which he described in a recent Guardian interview as “the worst thing I ever did”.
Many will know him best for a series of adverts shot in the late 80s and early 90s for BT with his catchphrase, “It’s good to talk”. He teamed up with Shane Meadows for Twenty Four Seven (1997) and A Room for Romeo Brass (2000), and winning much acclaim for his role in Atom Egoyan’s Felicia’s Journey (1999).
Most recently, Hoskins was seen in Made in Dagenham, Snow White and the Huntsman and Outside Bet. On the set of that film, about the Wapping newspaper dispute in the mid-80s, Hoskins told the Guardian why he kept on working: “There’s always someone who rings up and says: ‘Now Bob, before you go, there’s a cracking little swansong for you’.”
I shall always best remember Hoskins for the first role I saw him in: ‘Arthur’, the doomed sheet-music salesman in Dennis Potter’s elegiac 1978 TV series, Pennies From Heaven, in which he and co-star Cheryl Campbell lip-synched 1930′s pop songs to quite incredible emotional effect. Here he is, ‘singing’ Al Bowlly’s 1938 vocal (with the Lew Stone Orchestra), You Couldn’t Be Cuter:
Roger McCarthy (@RF_McCarthy) said,
August 9, 2012 at 7:08 pm
I seem to recall him doing some radical theatre in the 1970s but can see nothing about that online.
And his nasty, brutish and short Khrushchev in Enemy at the Gates was about the only historically accurate element in that ridiculous movie.
Matt said,
August 9, 2012 at 8:01 pm
I agree with you Jim that Pennies from Heaven is one of the best things he’s done.
According to Wikipedia, his dad was a communist lorry driver and Hoskins himself worked on a Socialist Zionist kibbutz in the late 60′s.
Robin Carmody said,
August 10, 2012 at 11:38 pm
“Socialist Zionist” … see, *that’s* what we need to reclaim as a naturally allied concept, rather than the near-contradiction it has (tragically) been allowed to become.