Bob Hoskins got his first real acting job by accident in a bar
Bob Hoskins was waiting in a London theatre bar for a friend when someone pushed a script into his hands and said he was next. He passed the audition, his friend ended up as his understudy, and the dyslexic school-leaver once dismissed as stupid went on to share the screen with cartoon rabbits.
Hoskins was born on 26 October 1942 in Bury St Edmunds and raised from infancy in Finsbury Park, the son of a cook and a lorry driver, with a Romani grandmother. Teachers wrote him off because of his dyslexia, and he left school at fifteen with a single O-level. Jobs as a porter, plumber and window cleaner followed, along with an abandoned accountancy course, six months on an Israeli kibbutz and two years looking after a Bedouin tribe's camels in Syria.
He first stepped on stage in 1968 in Stoke-on-Trent, playing a servant in Romeo and Juliet. The chance audition at the Unity Theatre came a year later; his friend Roger Frost called him a natural. Stage work opposite Diana Rigg and Patrick Stewart led to television, including a BBC adult literacy drama in which he played a removal man who struggled to read, reportedly watched by up to 17 million people. His breakthrough was Dennis Potter's Pennies from Heaven in 1978.
The gangster film The Long Good Friday and then Mona Lisa made his name in cinema, the second bringing a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, the Cannes acting prize and an Oscar nomination. For Who Framed Roger Rabbit he took mime training so he could appear to touch animated characters, and he said he hallucinated for months afterwards. He had a gift for American accents, playing J. Edgar Hoover in Nixon, and joked that a face like his did not get Errol Flynn's parts.
One role he openly regretted was Mario in the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film, which he called the worst thing he ever did; he only learned it was based on a video game from his son. Diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, he retired in 2012 and died of pneumonia in April 2014.
Source: Bob Hoskins
