7 Actors Whose Characters Die With Astonishingly Obscene Regularity

1. John Hurt

Confirmed Deaths: 40 What is it about the softly-spoken Hurt that seems to inspire death and destruction in the eyes of so many casting directors? All of the way throughout his long and distinguished career, Hurt has racked up a body count of an unbelievable 40 of his characters. As Wilde would say, to lose one is unfortunate, to lose 40 is remarkably careless. As with other entries, I've included miniseries here as well as mainstream cinema, though his death in I, Claudius is but a drop in the ocean of mortality to be honest. Famous Examples Even with a minor role in a film such as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Hurt can't resist shuffling off this mortal coil, to the extent that he does it off-screen and it takes you half of the remainder of the film to realise. That's dedication. He was vanquished in V For Vendetta, halted in his stride in Heaven's Gate and mothballed in Monolith. The Elephant Man and Hellboy saw him bite the dust, along with a whole host of minor roles in films spread over 5 decades. Even his triumphant role as the War Doctor in Doctor Who recently brings about a bittersweet realisation: as great as Hurt was, and as welcome as a War Doctor series would undoubtedly be, the chronology means that Hurt's incarnation is already a dead man walking. Hurt is a fine actor who can add layers to the simplest of characters-it's just wise never to get too attached to them. Most Memorable Death Scene How could it be anything other than Alien? From the undertones of male rape and fear of childbirth, to the sheer visceral terror of the execution, to the knowledge that Hurt's co-actors had no idea of the prosthetics involved in the scene or the storyboarding...it's fair to say that there are very few finer death scenes out there.