Charles Laughton won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his leading role in which film?

Charles Laughton (July 1899 – December 1962), an English stage and film actor, played a great number of parts where he was a classical and modern character. He was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death.

Laughton's career took him to Broadway and then Hollywood, CA. Prior to his work in Hollywood, he collaborated with Alexander Korda, a Hungarian-born British film director, producer, and screenwriter, who founded his own film production studios and film distribution company. He made some notable British films, including "The Private Life of Henry VIII" (1933), for which Laughton won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the title character.

Laughton portrayed everything from monsters and misfits to kings. A few of his biggest film hits include: "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (1934), "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935), "Ruggles of Red Gap" (1935), "Jamaica Inn" (1939), "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939), "The Big Clock" (1948), and "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957).

As King Henry VIII, Laughton gulps beer and chomps on mutton in iconic screen shots. In Korda’s first major international film success, King Henry is played as the ultimate anti-husband. Critics called it a raucous, entertaining, even poignant peek into the boudoirs of the infamous king and his 6 wives.