Hugh Griffith

Hugh Griffith was born on May 30, 1912 in UK. Hugh Griffith's big-screen debut came with Night Train to Munich directed by Carol Reed in 1940, strarring Sailor (uncredited). Hugh Griffith is known for Orson Welles' Great Mysteries directed by Alan Gibson, Orson Welles stars as Self - Host and Christopher Lee as Arnaud. Hugh Griffith has got 3 awards and 7 nominations so far. The most recent award Hugh Griffith achieved is Academy Awards, USA. The upcoming new movie Hugh Griffith plays is The Canterbury Tales which will be released on May 30, 1980.

Enjoyably larger-than-life character actor Hugh Emrys Griffith was born in Marianglas, Anglesey, North Wales, to Mary (Williams) and William Griffith. Griffith left the world of banking (having been employed as a teller) after winning a scholarship to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Though he graduated a gold medalist, top of his class of 300, the war put the brakes on his career and he enlisted in the Army in 1940, serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in India for six years. Following the war, he enjoyed a successful career on the stage, appearing in Shakespearean plays in Stratford-upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was particularly noteworthy as "Falstaff" and, his favourite role, "King Lear", which he played both in English and in his native Welsh. On the other side of the Atlantic, he made his Broadway debut in 1951 and had a hit starring in "Look Homeward Angel" (1957-59) with Anthony Perkins and Jo Van Fleet. The play ran for 564 performances and earned Griffith a Tony Award nomination for the part of "W.O. Gant". He later jokingly remarked, that, when the producers asked him to play a man from the deep south, he (Griffith) had understood that to mean a man from the deep south of Wales.Griffith started his film career proper in 1948 with films like London Belongs to Me (1948), followed by the wonderful black comedy Noblesse oblige (1949) at Ealing in 1949. A portly, thickly-bearded character with bushy eyebrows, ruddy complexion and a resonant voice, Griffith made a lasting impression for his many portrayals of eccentric, bucolic and, sometimes, raucous types. In 1959, he won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his "Sheikh Ilderim", who supplies Charlton Heston with the chariot race-winning white stallions in Ben-Hur (1959). He was equally memorable as the lecherous "Squire Western" in Tom Jones : Entre l'alcôve et la potence (1963), a role for which he was nominated for both an Oscar and a BAFTA Award as Best British Actor. He later appeared in the critically-acclaimed musical version of Oliver! (1968), as a hilarious "King Louis" in Commencez la révolution sans nous (1970) and one of Vincent Price's many victims in Le Retour de l'abominable docteur Phibes (1972). On television, he was a noteworthy, rolling-eyed "Long John Silver" in a 1960 version of "Treasure Island", The DuPont Show of the Month: Treasure Island (1960), and roving-eyed funeral director "Caradog Lloyd-Evans" in the comedy Grand Slam (1978).Griffith was a lifelong friend (and drinking companion) of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.