John Hurt, the esteemed British actor known for his burry voice and weathered visage - one that was kept hidden for his most acclaimed role, that of the deformed John Merrick in David Lynch's The Elephant Man - has died, his agent confirmed to BBC News. He was 77.

The two-time Oscar nominee's six-decade career also included turns on the BBC's Doctor Who and in A Man for All Seasons (1966), Midnight Express (1978) and three Harry Potter films.

He announced in June 2015 that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

On screens big and small, Hurt died what seemed a thousand deaths. "I think I've got the record," he once said. "It got to a point where my children wouldn't ask me if I died, but rather how do you die?"

On his YouTube page, a video titled "The Many Deaths of John Hurt" compiled his cinematic demises in 4 minutes and 30 seconds, from The Wild and the Willing (1962) to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), 40 in all.

One of his most memorable came when he played Kane, the first victim in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), in which he collapses over a table and a snakelike alien bursts out of his chest. (How'd they do that? There was an artificial chest screwed to the table, and Hurt was underneath.)

"Ridley didn't tell the cast," executive producer Ronald Shusett told Empire magazine in 2009. "He said, 'They're just going to see it.' "

"The reactions were going to be the most difficult thing," Scott explained. "If an actor is just acting terrified, you can't get the genuine look of raw, animal fear. What I wanted was a hardcore reaction."

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Hurt then lampooned the famous torso-busting scene for director Mel Brooks - whose production company produced 1980's The Elephant Man - for the 1987 comedy Spaceballs.

The Elephant Man received eight Academy Award nominations, including one for Hurt as best actor, but went home empty on Oscar night. (Hurt lost out to Robert De Niro as boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull.)

In 1980, he recalled the extensive makeup needed to become the kind-hearted man with the monstrous skull.

"It never occurred to me it would take eight hours for them to apply the full thing - virtually a working day in itself. There were 16 different pieces to that mask," he said. "With all that makeup on, I couldn't be sure what I was doing. I had to rely totally on [Lynch]."

Hurt also garnered an Oscar best supporting actor nomination and a Golden Globe win in 1979 for Midnight Express, in which he portrayed a heroin addict in a Turkish prison. The Alan Parker drama was based on the true story of Billy Hayes (played by Brad Davis), an American college student caught smuggling drugs.

"I loved making Midnight Express," he said in 2014. "We were making commercial films then that really did have cracking scenes in them, as well as plenty to say, you know?"

His more recent film appearances came in Snowpiercer (2013), The Journey (2016) and Jackie (2016). He is set to be seen in the upcoming features That Good Night and My Name Is Lenny and was to play Neville Chamberlain in the upcoming Joe Wright drama Darkest Hour.

John Vincent Hurt was born Jan. 22, 1940, in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, England. He studied art at his parents' behest, earning an art teacher's diploma. Disillusioned with the prospect of becoming a teacher, Hurt moved to London, where he won an acting scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He studied there for two years, securing bit parts in TV shows.

"I wanted to act very early. I didn't know how to become an actor, as such, nor did I know that it was possible to be a professional actor, but I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9," he told The Guardian in 2000. "I was effused with a feeling of complete and total enjoyment, and I felt that's where I should be."

Hurt made his London stage debut in Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger in 1962. That year, he acted in his first film, The Wild and the Willing, and his role as the duplicitous baron Richard Rich in Oscar best picture winner A Man for All Seasons helped him become more widely known in the U.S.

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Hurt often played wizened, sinister characters. In his younger years, his wiry frame, sallow skin and beady eyes curled together in performances that bespoke menace and hard-wrought wisdom. He was especially effective playing psychologically ravaged characters, like when he was a jockey plagued with cancer in Champions (1984) or the viciously decadent Caligula in the 1976 BBC miniseries I, Claudius.