Charles Laughton

Laughton, Charles 

Born July 1, 1899, in Scarborough; died Dec. 15, 1962, in Hollywood. English stage and film actor.

Laughton graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1926 and made his debut at the Barnes Theater. He began to act in British and American motion pictures in 1928. A realistic actor, Laughton played in both tragedies and comedies, creating strikingly unique types and inimitably pro-found and vital film characterizations—for example, Henry VIII (The Private Life of Henry VIII, 1933), Javert (Les Miserable* 1935), Captain Bligh (Mutiny on the Bounty), Rembrandt (Rembrandt, 1935), Quasimodo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939), and Sir Wilfrid (Witness for the Prosecution, 1962). He acted in London, New York, and Los Angeles in the plays of Shakespeare, Gogol, and Chekhov. Laughton directed and starred in Brecht’s The Life of Galileo (1947) and translated several plays.

REFERENCES

lakovlev, A. “Charlz Louton.” In Aktery zarubezhnogo kino, issue 1. Moscow, 1965.
Singer, K. The Charles Laughton Story. London, 1954.