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Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton was an English actor and director. Over his career he received an Academy Award and a Grammy Award as well as nominations for two BAFTAs and a Golden Globe. He earned a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
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entertainment · British actor (1899–1962) · theatre director · film director · film actor · stage actor · actor · television actor · director · film screenwriter · screenwriter · producer · also Charles Laughton, Laughton
Born 1 July 1899 · Died 15 December 1962 · Q55264
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2026· 1 entry
2025· 1 entry
collider: All 1 Movie Directed by Charles Laughton, Ranked
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2015· 1 entry
The Village Voice: A Crisply Restored Jamaica Inn Honors the Compelling Charles Laughton
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2005· 1 entry
insider.si.edu: Charles Laughton in "Island of Lost Souls"
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1995· 1 entry
On CD on a Nimbus Records collection entitled Prima Voce: The Spirit of Christmas Past
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1962· 7 entries
Died 1962-12-15.
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Awarded Grammy Award for Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording (1962).
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“[I have a face that would] stop a sundial and frighten small children into fits.”
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The year of Laughton's death, entitled The Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton
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“Hollywood is a goofy place. But I like it. It's the perfect mummers' home. If one weren't a little mad one wouldn't be there.”
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“I have a face like the behind of an elephant.”
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“Method actors give you a photograph. Real actors give you an oil painting.”
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1959· 1 entry
Although failing health resulted in both performances being disappointing, according to some British critics
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1957· 1 entry
They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances in Witness for the Prosecution (1957)—Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won.
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1955· 1 entry
Laughton directed The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish, and produced by his friend Paul Gregory
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1954· 1 entry
With The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, a full-length stage dramatisation by Herman Wouk of the court-martial scene in Wouk's novel The Caine Mutiny
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1953· 2 entries
Played Herod Antipas in Salome, and he reprised his role as Henry VIII in Young Bess, a 1953 drama about Henry's children
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Of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body, a full-length poem about the American Civil War and its aftermath
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1944· 2 entries
As a four-record 78-rpm set, but was afterward transferred to LP
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Referenced by Bertolt Brecht in his poem "Garden in Progress"
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1943· 1 entry
Laughton recorded a reading of the Nativity story from St
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1937· 2 entries
Recorded Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on a 10-inch Columbia 78, having made a strong impression with it in Ruggles of Red Gap
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Also for Korda, he starred in an ill-fated film version of the classic novel, I, Claudius, by Robert Graves, which was abandoned during filming owing to the injuries suffered by co-star Merle Oberon in a car crash
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1936· 1 entry
Went to Paris and on 9 May appeared at the Comédie-Française as Sganarelle in the second act of Molière's Le Médecin malgré lui, the first English actor to appear at that theatre, where he performed the role in French
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1934· 1 entry
Awarded Academy Award for Best Actor for The Private Life of Henry VIII (1934).
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1933· 2 entries
As Macbeth, Lopakin in The Cherry Orchard, Prospero in The Tempest and Angelo in Measure for Measure
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With the hugely successful The Private Life of Henry VIII (loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII), for which Laughton won the Academy Award for Best Actor
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1931· 1 entry
Immediately led to film offers, and Laughton's first Hollywood film, The Old Dark House (1932) with Boris Karloff, in which he played a bluff Yorkshire businessman marooned during a storm with other travelers in a creepy
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1929· 2 entries
Became US citizens in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death
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The two were married in 1929, became US citizens in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death.
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1927· 1 entry
Laughton began a relationship with Elsa Lanchester, at the time a castmate in a stage play
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1926· 2 entries
Studied at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1926).
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Played the role of the criminal Ficsur in the original London production of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (The play became a musical in 1945 by Rodgers and Hammerstein as Carousel, where Ficsur became Jigger Craigin, but Lau
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1925· 1 entry
Where actor Claude Rains was one of his teachers
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1899· 1 entry
Born 1899-07-01.
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