Bob Hoskins

Robert William "Bob" Hoskins was an English actor and film director, known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths, and gangsters in films. He was best known for his role as George in the 1986 British neo-noir mystery film Mona Lisa (in which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor). His other well-known roles included voicing Boris the Russian snow goose in the 1995 Universal Pictures animated film Balto, Winston the bulldog in Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, and for portraying Louis "Lou" Landsky in Mermaids, Nikita Khurshchev in the war film Enemy at the Gates, and Captain Hook's first mate Mr. Smee in Steven Spielberg's Hook.

For Disney, he portrayed Eddie Valiant in the 1988 Touchstone Pictures film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, J. Edgar Hoover in Nixon, Johnny Scanlan in Passed Away, Mario in 1993 Hollywood Pictures film Super Mario Bros., and Eddie Mannix in the 2006 Miramax film Hollywoodland. He also voiced Fezziwig and Old Joe in the 2009 animated film A Christmas Carol, where he once again collaborated with director Robert Zemeckis.

Hoskins was born in Bury St. Edmunds, the son of Elsie (née Hopkins), a cook and nursery school teacher, and Robert Hoskins, a bookkeeper and lorry driver. One of his grandmothers was Romani. From two weeks old, he was brought up in the Finsbury Park area of London. He attended Stroud Green Secondary School, where he was written off as "stupid" on account of his dyslexia. He left school at age 15 with a single O-Level and worked as a porter, lorry driver, plumber, and window cleaner. He started but did not complete a three-year accountancy course. He spent six months on a kibbutz in Israel and two years tending to the camels of a Bedouin tribe in Syria.

Hoskins officially retired from show business in 2012 due to an ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease. He died of pneumonia in 2014 at the age of 71 and was survived by his wife and four children.