British actor who received international recognition for his performance
as an old-fashioned London gangster out of his depth against new Britons,
new sexualities and new criminal forces in Neil
Jordan's Mona
Lisa (1986). Hoskins received Best Actor awards from Cannes, the
New York Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics, and BAFTA. Short,
stocky and balding, but nonetheless a romantic, Hoskins' ability to
play the bewilderment of the common man had first emerged in Dennis
Potter's BBC six-part serial, Pennies from Heaven (1978), and was developed
in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987). His tendency to express
his bewilderment through violence had appeared in John MacKenzie's The
Long Good Friday (1981). He also played J. Edgar Hoover in Oliver
Stone's Nixon (1995).
