Put it down to impeccable good judgment or a simple quirk of the release schedule. Either way, John Hurt has gone quietly viral in recent weeks. The British actor is currently riding high in the box office chart as Control, the chief mandarin in the acclaimed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. From Friday, he can also be seen as Kirsten Dunst's dyspeptic old dad in Lars Von Trier's award-winning Melancholia. And on Wednesday he'll be heading into the Guardian office for a live Q&A with readers. Rest assured we'll be checking to ensure it's him and not some crafty clone.
In the meantime we need your questions. Please note that Hurt is officially here to discuss his role in Melancholia, so you might ask about his experiences of working with Von Trier, or how he'd pass the time on the eve of armageddon. But feel free to let your inquiries range further afield, through the back catalogue. Certainly there's a lot of gems to be looking back on.
Here's the whistle-stop tour. John Hurt was born in 1940, the son of the vicar of Shirebrook, and initially trained as a painter before finding screen success in the likes of Z-Cars, A Man For All Seasons and 10 Rillington Place. He's played Quentin Crisp, Caligula, The Elephant Man , an alien's incubator and a heroic rabbit in Watership Down . Other credits include Scandal, Hellboy, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the recent remake of Brighton Rock. He was Von Trier's narrator on Dogville and Manderlay and cropped up as Mr Ollivander the wand-maker in the Harry Potter franchise. He is on no account to be confused with Mississippi John Hurt, the old Delta bluesman who sang You Got to Walk That Lonesome Valley, although we may try to get him in at a later date.
John Hurt will be answering your questions at 3pm on Wednesday 28 September, which means that we need questions submitted by 5pm on Tuesday. Please post like the wind.
