At 72, John Hurt's face finally looks good for its age But it is the off-set punishment that has given Hurt his central image. He once claimed to get through seven bottles of wine a day (although he later dropped the estimate to a mere three) and his wobbly appearances at showbiz galas and awards ceremonies became a popular career sideline. Long days were spent in West End pubs and clubs with the libidinous likes of Oliver Reed, Peter O'Toole and Richard Harris, and although he says he rarely drinks now, it isn't hard to detect a smack of regret as he casts a watery eye over the sanitised thespians of today. "Actors don't drink so much now," he said recently. There were eight of us sitting around the other night, and only one was drinking wine. Hurt accepts that he didn't have much option but to cut down. The alternative was death. So he poured his surplus energies into work, and today would be a candidate for the title of Britain's busiest actor - notching up four movies last year alone, including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and the extravagantly praised Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. All this plus regular television and stage work. For his part, Hurt plays down the perception that he specialises in oddball parts, although he admits to an affinity with the "unloved," and a particular interest in "people who are misunderstood." It isn't entirely surprising. His father was a Church of England vicar who sent him, against his will, to a strict Anglo-Catholic boarding school in Kent, which Hurt remembers as "so high church it made the papacy look puritanical." Displays of emotion were forbidden, to the extent that any boy who celebrated scoring a goal in a football match would be taken off and thrashed. It was, nevertheless, where he took his first acting part - as a girl - "and I felt an extraordinary feeling that I was in the place that I wanted to be." Despite his parents" objections, he moved on to Rada. He was married for the first time at 22 to an actress who supposedly told him she was pregnant. Hurt waited dutifully, but no child arrived, and after 18 months they parted. He then had a 15-year relationship with Marie-Lise Volpeliere Pierrot, a French model, who was killed in a riding accident in 1983. The following year he married a Texan barmaid, Donna Peacock, whom he took to Kenya where he was filming White Mischief. He and Donna liked Kenya so much that they built a house outside Nairobi, but when Hurt returned to Britain in 1988 to make Scandal, he immediately fell in love with Jo Dalton, a young production assistant. Donna would later claim that she offered to fly to London to save their marriage, but Hurt told her curtly: "Don't bother, I'm having an affair." He married Jo in 1990, and they had two children, Alexander and Nicolas, now 21 and 18 respectively. But four years in, while they were living in Ireland, Jo abandoned him for their gardener. According to Hurt, she had become exasperated by his drinking, and felt that he could not be fully trusted with the children. Dazed, he returned to Kenya and the forgiving arms of Donna, but the reunion did not last. "I was in a very bad state when I went back," he explained later. Donna later accused him of stranding her penniless on the slopes of Mount Kenya. She, too, complained of his drinking. Today, he appears secure with his fourth wife, Anwen Rees Meyers, a former actress and classical pianist who is 25 years his junior. They live in some style in Norfolk, where, between roles, he paints the world as he sees it. It isn't always a pretty sight - but neither is Hurt's face, and it certainly doesn't seem to have done him any harm.