Bernard Hill in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997)Scousers rarely tolerate Manchester United supporters. But they made an exception for Bernard Hill, who has died at the age of 79. In addition to playing John Lennon three times, most notably on stage in Willy Russell’s John, Paul, George, Ringo… and Bert (1974), he also played a quiffed bouncer in Alan Bleasdale’s No Surrender (1985); Pauline Collins’s indifferent chauvinist husband in the Russell-scripted Shirley Valentine (1989); an old lag providing a first-time offender with a criminal education in Going Off Big Time (2000); and Martin Freeman’s dad in the BBC series The Responder (2024), which proved to be Hill’s final role.
Most significantly, Hill also became a symbol of Liverpudlian desperation and defiance during the Thatcher era, as Yosser Hughes in Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff (1982). He had first portrayed the tough-nut tarmac layer in The Black Stuff, a 1978 Play for Today. But losing his wife and job took their toll on Yosser’s self-esteem, as he schlepped the streets with his three kids in tow while imploring, “Gizza job, go on, gizzit.” Resorting to the occasional headbutt, Yosser actually becomes a better man the deeper he sinks into despondency, displaying flashes of accidental wit, as he informs cameoing footballer Graeme Souness, “You look like me… Magnum as well,” and confesses to a priest who has told him to call him by his first name, “I’m desperate, Dan!”
Born on 17 December 1944, Hill was raised in Manchester’s Blackley district by a miner father and cook mother. After false starts training to be a quantity surveyor and a teacher, he was persuaded to enrol at the Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama by Mike Leigh, who would afford Hill his TV debut in Hard Labour (1973). Following a two-year stint at Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, he came south and made his mark as Gratus in the BBC’s I, Claudius (1976) and as Peter Vaughan’s short-fused son, Vin, in ITV’s Clapham crime series Fox (1980).
In the Year of Yosser, Hill also took the minor role of Sergeant Putnam in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982). It would be the first of three Best Picture winners in which he appeared, with James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) amassing 30 Oscars between them. As Captain Edward Smith, the white-bearded Hill maintained an air of helpless dignity as his ship strikes an iceberg, while as King Théoden of Rohan (who was also pivotal to The Two Towers, 2002) he overcame doubts that he could defeat Sauron to recover his strength, after being placed under a debilitating spell, and valiantly lead his forces against the Orcish armies.
So iconic are these roles that it’s easy to forget that Hill was a versatile actor with 130 screen credits to his name. He could hold his own as the Duke of York in all three parts of the BBC Television Shakespeare take on Henry VI (1983), while also making a menacing Magwitch in the BBC’s 1999 version of Great Expectations. He could exude authority as the narrator of documentaries like Wild China (2008), camp it up with Victoria Wood as William III and Mary II in The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse (2005), and show the nicer side of zombies as Judge Nathaniel Hopkins in the Disney stop-motion ParaNorman (2012).
Not everything Hill did was distinctive and distinguished. He literally gnawed on the scenery in North v South (2015), when his embattled mobster took a bite out of a bar chair. But he tended to choose roles carefully and opted against relocating to Hollywood. Studio ventures saw him play Dr David Livingstone in Mountains of the Moon (1990), while he returned to Africa to abet lion hunters Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer in The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). Having given Clint Eastwood a hard time as San Quentin governor Luther Plunkitt in True Crime (1999), Hill showed mercy to Dwayne Johnson as Philos, the inventive court magician in The Scorpion King (2002). He even shared a scene in Tunisia with Tom Cruise’s Claus von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie (2008). But his better parts came in homegrown projects.
Having amused as the corruptible coroner in Peter Greenaway’s Drowning by Numbers (1988), Hill excelled as the father trying to win back the trust of his daughter with cerebral palsy in the BAFTA-winning Skallagrigg (1994) and as the gruff thief who befriends John Hannah’s gay outsider in Madagascar Skin (1995). He faced off with Colm Meany in a battle of the céilí bands in The Boys from County Clare (2003) before playing a churchwarden searching for his son in the sci-fi fantasy Franklyn (2008).
On television, he made a fine David Blunkett in A Very Social Secretary (2005), returned to his roots as a Mancunian sweet factory owner in From There to Here (2014), and proved a doughty adversary as the Duke of Norfolk to Mark Rylance’s Thomas Cromwell in the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2015). But Hill would summon Yosser’s “I can do that” spirit for one last cinematic hurrah in teaming with Virginia McKenna, as a middle-class couple who become bank robbers after losing everything in the 2008 financial crisis in the overlooked Golden Years (2016).
Bernard Hill, 17 December 1944 to 5 May 2024