Daily Mirror

He had been set to play the role of Billy Rice, father of Kenneth Branagh’s lead character Archie, but was taken hospital with an intestinal complaint and told by doctors it was “too soon… to undertake an arduous stage role,”.

In a statement, he said at the time: “It is therefore with great sadness and disappointment that I must withdraw.”

In October 2015, he was given the all clear after revealing he had been battling pancreatic cancer four months earlier, saying: “I am overjoyed, I am thrilled. It all looks great for the future, it’s fantastic.”

He received his knighthood in July the same year, and said of the honour: “It does make one inordinately proud.”

He also said he regretted his parents not being alive to see him receive the accolade.

The star lead a colourful life, partying for many years with the likes of Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed and Lucian Freud.

He once boasted he drank seven bottles of wine every day, though later reduced his estimate to three.

Notorious for his wild lifestyle, he was reportedly fond of saying his career track record “isn’t bad for an old drunk”.

But in 2008 he said he’d been without drink for several years, and noted: “Times change. You change.

“When it no longer seemed to help, creatively, I mean, as it unquestionably had helped at one stage, it seemed time to give it up.

“Besides, attitudes to drinking have changed. Would Churchill have been able to get away with his drinking if he had been a politician today?”

Living in near-total sobriety in his later years, he grumbled in 2012: “Actors don’t drink so much now. There were eight of us sitting around the other night, and only one was drinking wine.”

Living in Norfolk, where he worked closely with the Cinema City venue, he took up painting as a hobby and once said: “All I want to do now is work, paint and spend as much time as possible with my wife.”

He married his fourth wife, film producer Anwen, 51, in 2005,and described the pair as being “wonderfully married”.

But previously, he was notorious for tumultuous love life. At the age of 22, he married actress Annette Robertson, reportedly while under the impression she was pregnant. After 18 months together, and no child, they parted.

He dated Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Pierrot for 16 years, but she died after falling from a horse in 1983 while the couple were out riding together in Oxford.

The next year he married Texan barmaid Donna Peacock, but described their relationship as “a Godzilla story” during which he built a “crazy” house in Kenya.

He later left her for American production assistant Joan “Jo” Dalton, who he met on the set of Scandal, and the couple moved into the Savoy hotel together.

They married in 1990, and had two sons together, Alexander “Sacha”, 26, and Nick, 23.

They divorced six years later after she reportedly found his drink problem impossible to live with, and left him for a landscape gardener.

In a strange turn of events, the exes were, at one point, dating a brother and sister, when Sir John dated socialite Sara Owens for seven years.

He later met Anwen, who he fondly described as “a Welsh Brummie” in 2003 at London’s Groucho club.

He said of their meeting: “I was on my own. She was with a couple of friends. We got talking and because she’s intelligent she didn’t have any preconceptions about me.”

The son of a vicar in the East Midlands, with one brother Michael, who later became a monk, and an adopted sister Monica, Sir John attended an Anglican academy, but failed to get the grades to attend a private secondary school and instead went to the public Lincoln school.

He has described being “different” to the other students, saying: “To get along with the others, I quickly learned to become working-class, a reactionary, a teddy, a low life. I even changed accents. I hated it.”

At the age of 17, Sir John asked his parents – amateur actress Phyllis and the Rev. Arnould Herbert – if he could become an actor.

He said in 1990: “They thought it represented something risque and populist. It was out of the question.”

Instead, he studied art, but while living in London in 1960 he auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Within three years he had made a number of appearances in London’s West End, and was hailed by critics.

For his first major big-screen role, The Elephant Man in 1980, he spent seven hours in makeup transforming into Victorian circus act John Merrick.

It took a further two hours to remove the 22 individual pieces of prosthetic deformities.

The film’s director, David Lynch, described him as “simply the greatest actor in the world”.

During his career, Sir John picked up two Academy Award nominations – for The Elephant Man and Midnight Express.

He won four Baftas for films including An Englishman in New York and The Naked Civil Servant.