No other actor has a more legitimate claim on the title of the British Cagney.īob Hoskins in Pennies From Heaven. Hoskins could be poodle or pitbull as a reluctant driver for a prostitute in Mona Lisa (1986) and a patiently calculating murderer in Felicia's Journey (1999), he was a cross-breed of the two. Playing an ambitious East End gangster in The Long Good Friday (1980), he added an intimidating quality to the vulnerability already established. But he was defined from the outset by a mix of the tough and the tender that served him well throughout his career.Īs the beleaguered, optimistic sheet-music salesman in the BBC series Pennies from Heaven (1978), written by Dennis Potter, he was sweetly galumphing and sincere. In his moments of on-screen rage, he resembled a pink grenade. Short, bullet-headed, lacking any noticeable neck, but with a mutable face that could switch from snarling to sparkling in the time it took him to drop an aitch, Hoskins was far from conventional leading-man material. Plenty of better-looking performers than Bob Hoskins, who has died aged 71 of pneumonia, have found themselves consigned to a life of bit parts.
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