Bernard Hill died on 5 May aged 79. Cinema Paradiso pays tribute.
Just days before the BBC launched the second series of The Responder (2022-), the sad news came that Bernard Hill had passed away. During his 50-year career, Hill had worked in theatre, television, and film. He had taken leads and character roles in TV-movies, series, and classic serials, as well as low-budget British features and Hollywood blockbusters. As we shall see, just about everything he did was distinctive and distinguished.
The Play's the Thing
Bernard Hill was born on 17 December 1944 in the Blackley district of Manchester. His father had served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, but had gone down the local coal mine after being discharged, while his mother worked in the kitchens at the nearby ICI plant. As money was tight, Bernard slept in the same bed as his parents at his grandmother's two-bedroomed flat.
Raised a Roman Catholic and a die-hard Manchester United fan, he attended St John Bosco primary school before moving on to Xaverian College in Rusholme. He hoped to become a quantity surveyor, but his plans changed after a trip to The Aldwych in London to see David Warner's groundbreaking improvisations in Peter Hall's 1965 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet. Joining an amateur theatre group, Hill twice applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but failed to secure a place.
Deciding to train as a teacher, Hill enrolled at De La Salle College in Manchester. Here, a part-time tutor (who had seen him in a Salford Players production in 1968) encouraged him to sign up to the Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama. He just happened to be Mike Leigh and Hill found himself on the course alongside Julie Walters and Richard Griffiths. Graduating in 1970, he joined Granada's experimental Stables Theatre before becoming a member of David Scase's Library Theatre company. Then, his old tutor gave him a call.
Small-Screen Steps
Mike Leigh had already made his feature bow with Bleak Moments (1971) when he was invited to make 'Hard Labour' for the acclaimed BBC series, Play For Today. This 1973 episode stars Liz Smith as a cleaning lady, while Hill makes his professional debut as her mechanic son, Edward Thornley, who lives on a council estate with his browbeating wife (Alison Steadman). This can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Mike Leigh at the BBC: Hard Labour/The Permissive Society (1973), while two of Hill's six later appearances on the showcase are also available, 'Our Flesh and Blood' (1977, also with Steadman) and 'The Spongers' (1978), which are respectively on 'Play for Today' Volume 1 and Volume 2.
Having appeared in an episode of ITV's adaptation of Rudyard Kipling Childhood, Hill played a copper in Village Hall (1974) and made five visits to Fulchester for Crown Court (1972-84). His feature career began rather inauspiciously as Syph in It Could Happen to You (aka Intimate Teenage Secrets, 1975), which was an exploitational educational about sexually transmitted diseases directed by Stanley A. Long (some of whose softcore comedies are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso). As Blind Freddie the beggar, Hill was in much better company alongside John Mills and Donald Pleasence in Kevin Connor's Trial By Combat (aka A Dirty Knight's Work, 1976), which would be well worth a release on disc.
Back on the box, Hill made his first lasting impression as Gratus, the procurator of Jerusalem, in the 'Hail Who?' and 'Fool's Luck' episodes of the BBC's masterly adaptation of Robert Graves's, I, Claudius (1976). He next cropped up as CPO Straker in the 'Jack Fell Down' storyline of Warship (1973-77) before landing the recurring role of Morton in Rooms (1974-77), which surprisingly didn't receive a release on disc after being revived on Talking Pictures TV.
More guest slots followed, as Hill started to become a familiar face. Having returned to films, as Carter in Jack Gold's undervalued study of racist Britain, The Sailor's Return (1978) - which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Armchair Theatre - he was cast as Vin alongside Ray Winstone (Kenny) and Larry Lamb (Joey), as the sons of Billy Fox (Peter Vaughan), the Covent Garden porter-turned-Clapham mobster in Fox (1980), a tight Euston Films series that earned writer Trevor Preston a BAFTA. He also played a concerned father alongside Brenda Blethyn and Timothy Spall in John Mackenzie's Say No to Strangers (1981), a short warning children about stranger danger that can be found on Worth the Risk? (2011), Volume 6 of the BFI's excellent COI Collection.
Until now, Hill had been cast in contemporary items. But he became part of the peerless ensemble assembled for the BBC Television Shakespeare, when he was cast as the Duke of York in all Henry VI. He also played Sir William Brandon and the First Murderer in Richard III (all 1983). Hill had trodden the boards as Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night in 1978 and would take the title role in Macbeth at the Leicester Haymarket in 1985. Other notable stage excursions included Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard (1989), Sir Chiffley Lockheart in Ben Elton's West End bow, Gasping (1990), and Eddie Carbone in A View From the Bridge (1995). But Hill was more comfortable in front of a camera than an audience, especially after he discovered he could do a cracking Scouse accent.
Liddypuddle
Like many a young actor, Hill sought the stability of a repertory company to hone his craft. He spent two years at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, during which time he made his breakthrough as John Lennon in Willy Russell's John, Paul, George, Ringo...and Bert (1974), alongside Trevor Eve as Paul McCartney, Phillip Joseph as George Harrison, Antony Sher as Ringo Starr, and George Costigan as Bert. Barbara Dickson performed several Beatle songs and the cast appeared with Melvin Bragg on the arts show, 2nd House. Centring around a fictional reunion of the Fab Four, the musical ran for eight weeks in Liverpool before spending a year at the Lyric Theatre in London, where it won Critics Circle and Evening Standard Awards.
Harrison disliked the show so much that he withdrew permission to use 'Here Comes the Sun'. Perhaps he remembered Hill's involvement when he was producing Jim Goddard's Shanghai Surprise (1986) and replaced him with Paul Freeman after he had supposedly irked Sean Penn during the shoot in Hong Kong. Or maybe Harrison had seen Hill playing his erstwhile bandmate in Ken Howard's John Lennon: A Journey in the Life (1985), a docudrama that was made to mark fifth anniversary of the Beatle's murder. Indeed, Hill would return to the Mop Tops as the narrator of Fiona Proctor's actuality, The Beatles' Biggest Secrets (2007). 'I've played John Lennon three times in total,' Hill later reflected. 'There were things that John Lennon was doing, where no one knew how he behaved, like walking down the street, picking his nose, or having an argument, that kind of thing. So you're at liberty to do it the way you think you should be doing it. As long as you're being true to the character. If you've done your research and you're being true to it, then it's going to work.'
While he made a good Lennon, Hill's most memorable Scouse excursion saw him play Yosser Hughes in two small-screen works by Alan Bleasdale. Directed by Jim Goddard under the Play For Today banner, 'The Black Stuff' (1980) followed a Liverpudlian tarmac crew to Middlesbrough, where George Malone (Peter Kerrigan), Chrissie Todd (Michael Angelis), Loggo Logmond (Alan Igbon), Dixie (Tom Georgeson) and Kevin Dean (Gary Bleasdale), and Yosser lock horns with another gang. The latter was a misogynist hothead who nutted first and asked questions later. However, when Bleasdale revisited the characters for Boys From the Blackstuff (1982), Yosser had undergone a dramatic change.
Although written when James Callaghan was shepherding the country into the Winter of Discontent, the series came to epitomise Liverpool's stand-off with Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who privately considered the rundown city beyond saving. Abandoned by his wife to raise their three kids on his own, Yosser is a man broken by a cruel world, who traipses the streets manically seeking work with the plea, 'Gizza job, go on, gizzit,' which became as much a catchphrase of the era as Harry Enfield's 'Loadsamoney'. Head-butting lampposts, trees, and confessional boxes, Yosser becomes a nicer bloke as he sinks to the point of telling the local priest, 'I'm desperate, Dan!'
'Yosser's Story' was the only one of the five episodes shot on film, with the studio scenes in the others being photographed on the cheap by Match of the Day camera crews. The programme won three BAFTAs, but Hill missed out on Best Actor to Alec Guinness for Smiley's People (1982). Bleasale, who had written Yosser specially for Hill, claimed he had delivered 'the great, definitive performance of his generation'. But the actor revealed that the character had left scars. 'I found myself drinking a bit more and laughing a bit louder. There weren't many moments when I could relax...If you're playing somebody who's heading for insanity, you might as well go there yourself and see what it's like.' Years later, he was still troubled by the role. 'I found playing the part opened the doors on my emotions and let them out. But to some extent, the door stuck. Everyone has a shut-off valve on their emotions. I think mine was slightly damaged playing Yosser, and it will take time to heal.'
Three years later, Hill reunited with Bleasdale in Peter Smith's No Surrender (1985), a bleak farce in which he played Bernard, the quiffed bouncer at the social club that has been double booked for New Year's Eve by parties of exiled Irish Catholics and Protestants. Hill also reteamed with Willy Russell for Lewis Gilbert's Shirley Valentine (1989), which saw him essaying another careless Scouse chauvinist, as Joe Bradshaw has become so used to wife Shirley (Pauline Collins) being careworn through raising their kids that he has stopped seeing her as a woman. Baffled when she refuses to come home after a holiday romance in Greece, Joe flies out Mykonos to save his marriage and, in the process, rediscovers a lost part of himself.
Despite preventing the character from becoming a comic caricature, Hill's performance was overshadowed by Collins's Oscar-nominated turn. But Hill had done playing Scousers for a while and didn't return to Merseyside until Jim Doyle's Going Off, Big Time (2000), in which he was cast as Murray, the veteran jailbird who helps first-time offender Mark Clayton (Neil Fitzmaurice) acclimatise to life behind bars before getting caught up in his racket selling Ecstasy tablets from ice-cream vans.
Another quarter of a century would elapse before Hill needed his Scouse accent again. 'It'll always be lingering around somewhere,' he said in a recent interview. 'Before I even went to Liverpool, people used to ask me "Why are you speaking like a Scouser?" and the answer is I don't know, it wasn't intentional and I don't know why but something inside me was determined to break into Scouse! And it was very easy for me to do it.' He continued, 'Liverpool is one of my favourite places, I've got a great relationship with the city. I lived there for a long time and my daughter was born there so it's like my second home.'
Sadly, he wouldn't live to see the new series of The Responder, in which he took the role of Tom, the father of Liverpool bobby Chris Carson (Martin Freeman). Scripted by ex-copper Tony Schumacher, the first season had earned four BAFTA nominations and Hill was delighted to join the cast. While revisiting old haunts, he discovered that James Graham's stage version of Boys From the Blackstuff was playing at the Royal Court Theatre. 'I couldn't believe it,' he said. The spirit of Yosser Hughes lives on.
A Bit of Everything
Having played one working-class hero, Hill was cast as Lech Walesa in Squaring the Circle, Tom Stoppard's bafflingly unavailable account of the Solidarity uprising in Poland that was directed by Mike Hodges. Hill also provided solid support to James Fox, as he searched for his missing tweenage daughter in Charles Sturridge's take on Stephen Poliakoff's Runners (both 1983), another undervalued British film that should be on disc.
Hill stuck by Captain William Bligh (Anthony Hopkins) as Boatswain William Cole in Roger Donaldson's The Bounty, but had a meatier role in Martin Thurley's teleplay, Still Life (both 1984), in which he plays a paralysis patient who shows new arrival Michael Kitchen how not to suffer in silence. This would also repay a release, as would Norman Stone's Screen Two presentation, The Burston Rebellion, in which Hill and Eileen Atkins play teachers whose students go on strike when they are dismissed for being socialists. But Cinema Paradiso users can snap up Hill's performances as Highland bandit Vincent Friell's despairing father in Michael Hoffman's Restless Natives (which boasts a magnificent soundtrack by Big Counry) and as Warren Mitchell's removal man sidekick in Jack Gold's The Chain (all 1984), a fresh look at the Seven Deadly Sins by Jack Rosenthal whose theme tune was sung by Barbara Dickson.
After teaming with Mick Ford to scale Mont Blanc in 1786 in Colin Godman's The Great White Mountain and James Fox to sail to 17th-century Plymouth Rock in New World (both 1986), Hill played an officer in the British Army in Northern Ireland in Karl Francis's Welsh drama, Milwr Bychan (aka The Boy Soldier). He then landed his first feature lead, as Hiller, the alcoholic computer programmer who is kidnapped with his stepson for refusing to co-operate with vicious bank robber Salto (Richard Hope), in Richard Loncraine's thriller, Bellman and True (1987). However, he was better served by Peter Greenaway's witty dialogue in Drowning By Numbers (1988), which sees corrupt coroner Henry Madgett help three women named Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright, Juliet Stevenson, and Joely Richardson) get away with murder.
A rare Hollywood assignment took Hill to Africa for Bob Rafelson's Mountains of the Moon (1990), an account of the rivalry between British explorers Richard Francis Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Hanning Speke (Iain Glen), which cast Hill as Dr David Livingstone. The corridors of power called as he played Martin Allport in Jim Goddard's Screen Two political drama, The Law Lord (1991), which was followed by a first voiceover credit, as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which formed part of Shakespeare: The Animated Tales (1992-94).
In menacing Norman Wisdom's safecracker, Hill had a ball in Shani S. Grewal's Double X: The Name of the Game (1992), as hissable gangster Iggy Smith throws his boss out of a helicopter and complains about his game leg. However, Hill was on the other side of the law as Chief Constable Harmsworth in two episodes of Between the Lines (1992-94) and when he teamed with Maggie Stead so that Uncle Fred and Aunt Vickie could disapprove of the music played by the daydreaming Mick Hopper (Ewan McGregor) in Dennis Potter's Cold War comedy, Lipstick on Your Collar (1993).
The same year saw Hill pull off a Scottish accent as farmer Tam Ferrier resists the overtures of land developers in Bob Keen's Shepherd on the Rock. He also contributed a forgotten powerhouse performance to Roy Battersby's three-part BBC take on Edward Bond's Olly's Prison (both 1993), in which he is truly harrowing as Mike, the father who can't recall strangling daughter Charlotte Coleman. Hill was equally impressive in Richard Spence's Skallagrigg (1994), William Horwood's reworking of his autobiographical novel in which John strives to reconnect with Esther (Kerry Noble), the estranged daughter with cerebral palsy who has been consigned to a residential care home.
In making his sitcom debut, Hill spent six episodes as soft-hearted Yorkshire father Len Tollit in Once Upon a Time in the North (1994) before he armoured up for an uncredited cameo alongside Sean Connery's King Arthur and Richard Gere's Lancelot in Jerry Zucker's First Knight. Then, as the ruthless Frank Nickle, he made life miserable for ambitious rent collector Rory Connor (Robson Green) in Victorian South Shields in Norman Stone's adaptation of Catherine Cookson's The Gambling Man. Most notable among his 1995 credits, however, was Hill's pairing with John Hannah in Chris Newby's Madagascar Skin, as gritty thief Flint shares a cottage in an insular coastal enclave with gay outsider Harry.
After cropping up in an uncredited cameo in Bob Keen's The Big Game, as the father of Gary Webster's gambling-addicted factory worker, and as the engine driver in Terry Jones's version of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, Hill took on the role of Edward Tolliver, who loses the Dorlcote property that has been in his family for 300 years in Graham Theakston's tele-interpretation of George Elliot's classic novel, The Mill on the Floss, which co-starred Emily Watson as his rebellious daughter, Maggie.
Hollywood called again when Hill was cast as Dr David Hawthorne in Stephen Hopkins's The Ghost and the Darkness (all 1996), a tale set in Victorian Kenya by screenwriter William Goldman that pitted Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer against each other as railway engineer Charles Remington and lion hunter John Henry Patterson. Tensions on set made it an unhappy experience. But it raised Hill's profile sufficiently for him to land one of his most iconic roles.
The Oscar Magnet
In 1982, Hill had played Sergeant Putnam in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. It was a minor role that merely required him to haul his officer (Dominic Guard) on to the roof of the station at Champaran and express puzzlement at who could be travelling on an incoming train to have attracted such a vast crowd. Yet Hill played his part in helping Attenborough's long-gestating biopic win eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, and Actor for Ben Kingsley.
Fifteen years later, Hill portrayed Captain Edward J. Smith, the veteran White Star Line skipper who was on the bridge on 14 April 1912, as James Cameron reveals in Titanic (1997). Adopting an air of peremptory authority, the white-bearded Hill looked every inch the man in control, as the unsinkable liner left Southampton on its maiden voyage. Yet, while Smith proved fallible in his judgements on the voyage, Cameron has Hill remain stiff-upper-lipped in the wheelhouse as he went down with his ship - even though some eyewitness accounts of Smith's orders, demeanour, and actions varied considerably.
Hill was nominated by the Screen Actors Guild in the category of Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Indeed, he had played a notable part in the film equalling the record of William Wyler's Ben-Hur (1959) in receiving 11 Academy Awards. As he got to spend time with hero David Warner, Hill enjoyed the shoot enormously. As he later remarked, 'everybody really liked each other and there was no strain. It was quite intimate.' However, things might have turned out very differently.
While shooting the scene in which RMS Titanic starts to sink, Hill realised that things weren't going entirely to plan on the set. 'Instead of the water building up against the windows outside,' he remembered, 'the water was coming in because it had been dipped in water for quite a while during the week. and the floorboards had warped. There was a dais to stand on for the guy at the wheel, this big heavy piece of wood...the next thing I know, the water was almost up to our waist and this massive piece of wood just went "oof" and came off its catches and broke its nails. And if that had hit either of us, it would have been disastrous, it would have been a serious injury.'
He went on: 'I was slashing across my throat to say, "We've got to cut" and then Josh [McLaglen, the assistant director] came in and said, "Don't ever call cut!" I called it early because I was getting worried, especially when that piece of wood came up. I got told off for saving my own life!'
Despite being part of the first feature to make $1 billion at the global box office, Hill remained modest about his contribution. 'Nobody really knows who I am!' he confided in an article marking the picture's silver jubilee. 'They say, "You were the captain on the Titanic", and I'd say, "No I'm far too young for that!"'
But he hadn't finished his Oscar-hoovering mission just yet. Although not involved in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Hill joined the ensemble for the second part of this epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's cult novel, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002). Initially, Théoden, the 17th King of Rohan is debilitated by the spell placed upon him by Saruman (Christopher Lee), the evil wizard controlled by Sauron. However, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) restores his vigour in time for him to lead the Rohirrim into the Battle of Hornburg at Helm's Deep.
During the shoot, Hill broke his sternum and had an ear slashed open by a sword. As a fan of the book, however, he later claimed, 'I loved every minute of every day that I was on Lord of the Rings.' He had actually auditioned for the part of Gandalf, but it's impossible to think of anyone else uttering the line to Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), 'Where was Gondor when the Westfold fell?' Remaining in bellicose mood, Théoden rallies his forces with the words, 'Ride now, ride now! Ride for ruin, and the world's ending!' in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) in order to confront the Witch-king of Angmar (Lawrence Makoare) and the Orcish armies at the Battle of Pelennor Fields.
Fans won't need telling how the story plays out or that The Return of the King also notched 11 Oscars, including Best Picture. This record-equalling tally meant that Hill had appeared in three Best Picture winners, which had scooped 30 Academy Awards between them. Moreover, Hill got to convert his third Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Cast. It would be the only award he would ever win.
By a quirk of fate, the film was released on Hill's 59th birthday. He had hoped to work with Peter Jackson again, but hadn't been convinced by his ambitious plan to adapt Tolkien's The Hobbit as An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). Nevertheless, Hill would have been touched by Jackson fondly recalling him as 'one of the funniest and quickest witted people we ever had the good fortune to work with. His performance as Théoden, King of Rohan, is beloved by millions and stands testament to his brilliance as an actor. But we will remember him as a deeply loyal and loving friend.'
Jobbing to the End
Success takes time to trickle down in the acting game. Consequently, despite having been a pivotal figure in the highest-grossing film of all time, Hill was next seen alongside Gina McKee as Kelly Macdonald's parents in Mike Figgis's The Loss of Sexual Innocence. He followed this by returning to the Bard to essay Egeus striving to keep daughter Hermia (Anna Friel) away from Lysander (Dominic West) in Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream. However, having excelled as Magwitch in Julian Jarrold's BBC take on Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Hill ended 1999 with two law enforcement roles. Having become convinced as Detective Inspector Walker that musician Steven Mackintosh has killed Natasha Little in Julien Simpson's thriller, The Criminal, Hill's San Quentin warden, Luther Plunkitt, gave little credence to the claim made by journalist Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood) that Death Row inmate Frank Beechum (Isaiah Washington) may be innocent of murder in Eastwood's True Crime.
Hill began the new millennium in curious fashion, as Abbot Frederick negotiating the fact that Brother Anselm (M.E. Hackett) is miraculously pregnant in Tim Disney's barely seen religious satire, Blessed Art Thou. Regrettably, the same fate befell Canadian Renny Bartlett's Eisenstein (both 2000), which starred Simon McBurney as Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein and afforded Hill the opportunity to voice Joseph Stalin. But the Titanic factor clearly led to Hill being cast as Philos, the court magician with a knack of conjuring up quirky inventions in Chuck Russell's The Scorpion King (2002), which served as a prequel to Stephen Somers's The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001) and the first in a five-strong sword-and-sorcery franchise about Mathayus of Akkad, who was played in the lauch entry by Dwayne Johnson.
Although never tempted to relocate to Los Angeles, Hill returned Stateside to join Halle Berry and Robert Downey, Jr. as prison governor Phil Parsons in Mathieu Kassovitz's supernatural thriller, Gothika (2003), which tasks Downey with investigating the murder of Berry's husband when she's charged with the crime. Reviews were mixed, as they were for Richard Loncraine's Wimbledon (2004), in which Hill plays the father of Paul Bettany's tennis journeyman, and Steve Bendelack's The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse (2005), in which he and Victoria Wood play King William III and Queen Mary II in the gothic horror segment, 'The King's Evil'.
But Hill enjoyed squaring up to Colm Meany as brothers John Joe and Jimmy McMahon in John Irvin's 1960s Irish céilí band romp, The Boys of County Clare (2003). However, he was in more serious mode as Derek Jennings in Mikael Salomon's espionage series, The Grid (2004), in which British and American agents join forces to prevent a terrorist attack on the underground networks in London and New York. Having earned another BAFTA nomination for playing Home Secretary David Blunkett alongside Robert Lindsay's Tony Blair in Jon James's A Very Social Secretary (2005), Hill returned to the cloak-and-dagger world of spying in Reg Traviss's Joy Division (2006), as Dennis, the contact sought out in 1962 London by Thomas (Ed Stoppard), a German who had vanished after going to fight the Red Army in the closing days of the Second World War. Speaking of the 1939-45 conflict, Hill found himself in Tunisia as Wolfgang Fischer (the commander of the 10th Panzer Division of the German Afrika Korps) for a scene with Tom Cruise's Claus von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie (2008), Bryan Singer's account of the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
In between times, Hill went to Spain to play Crown, the tyrannical manager of the Rio Tinto copper mine, in Antonio Cuadri's The Heart of the Earth (2007), which recalls the 1888 uprising by Huelva miners against their British bosses. While Cinema Paradiso can bring you this imposing performance, Hill's work as Oscar Kurz in Lukas Emi's Save Angel Hope (2006) and Pharaoh Mann in Penny Woolcock's Exodus (2007) is currently out of reach. However, we have several examples of Hill's excellence as a narrator for you to choose from, whether you are interested in historical topics like Ancient Egyptians (2004), natural history series like Wild China (2008), nautical reality shows such as Ice Patrol Online, Navy Patrol: Return to the Ice/Frozen World, Navy Patrol: Shackleton's Island, and Navy Patrol: Disaster At Cape Horn (all 2009), travelogues like Indian Hill Railways (2010), or technological surveys like Guy Martin's How Britain Worked (2012). He also appeared on screen in Saxon Gold: Finding the Hoard and Secrets of Saxon Gold (2010), while his voiceover work probably persuaded Disney/Pixar that he was right to play Judge Nathaniel Hopkins, who proves that zombies aren't all bad in Sam Fell and Chris Butler's stop-motion animation, ParaNorman (2012).
In Gerald McMorrow's Franklyn (2008), Hill played Peter Esser, a churchwarden from Cambridge who encounters Eva Green's student and Ryan Phillippe's vigilante detective while searching for his missing son in a dystopian London. He also joined Suranne Jones for five episodes as Gerard Hopkirk in the second series of Five Days (2007-2010), as DC Laurie Franklin cracks cases while coping with her mother's Alzheimers.
After faking his own death as John Darwin in the docudrama, Canoe Man, Hill turned up as Uncle David to Kevin Lewis (Augustus Prew and Rupert Friend) in The Kid (both 2010), Nick Moran's adaptation of Lewis's account of his troubled 1980s youth in on the New Addington estate near Croyden. He disconcerted as Cranleigh in Anthony Woodley's Outpost 11 (2012), a horror set in an alternative 1950s in which three soldiers are stranded at an Arctic base, as Britain wages the Second Hundred Years' War against Prussia.
Returning to his roots, Hill played Samuel Cotton, the owner of a Mancunian sweet factory in the three-part BBC drama, From There to Here (2014). He played a bluffer northerner, John Claridge, facing down rival mobster Vic Clarke (Steven Berkoff) in Steven Nesbit's BritCrime twist on the Romeo and Juliet story, North v South. Also in 2015, Hill took holy orders as murder suspect Fr Robert Greaves in Andy Wilson's Unforgotten before his equally Catholic Duke of Norfolk gave Mark Ryalance's Protestant schemer, Thomas Cromwell, a run for his Tudor money in Peter Kosminsky's adaptation of Hilary Mantel's prize-winning novel, Wolf Hall.
Having channelled his inner Yosser Hughes to play Arthur Goode, the middle-class senior who starts robbing banks with wife Virginia McKenna after their pensions are wiped out in John Miller's Golden Years (2016), Hill took a lengthy sabbatical between Angela Ismailos's Interlude City of a Dead Woman (2016) and Álvaro de Armiñán's Second Chance (2018) and Henk Pretorius's Forever Young and Chris Cronin's The Moor (both 2023). Sadly, this quartet has not been widely seen and there is no news about any release on disc. However, there should be plenty of demand for the second series of The Responder, as Cinema Paradiso users get their last glimpse of a hardworking actor who never let anyone down over his five-decade career. Indeed, he often held the nation spellbound, whether playing Scousers, skippers, or kings.
