Bob Hoskins Biography

British actor Bob Hoskins was a versatile performer known for playing both brutal cockney gangsters and tender sad sacks, as well as energetic comedy roles such as in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

He fell into acting by accident after ten years of odd jobs, landing a role when he went to a friend’s audition in 1968.

Hoskings had his first big break in 1978, with the television mini-series Pennies From Heaven. He began in the 1980s to focus more on a film career, winning fans with critical hits The Long Good Friday (1980), The Cotton Club (1984) and 1986’s Mona Lisa, for which he earned an Oscar nomination.

By the late 1980s, Hoskin was a Hollywood star, unique in his fireplug physique and screen energy, and starring in A Prayer for the Dying (1987, starring Mickey Rourke), The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearn (1987, starring Maggie Smith), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988, opposite Jessica Rabbit), Mermaids (1990, starring Cher) and Steven Spielberg‘s Hook (1991).

After the disastrous 1993 movie Super Mario Bros., Hoskins made fewer big budget movies and tended to more tender dramatic roles (with exceptions).

His other films include Nixon (1995, as J. Edgar Hoover), Felicia’s Journey (1999), Enemy at the Gates (2001, as Nikita Khrushchev) and Snow White and the Huntsman (2012, starring Kristen Stewart).