Did you ever see Mona Lisa? I imagine you have because of your residence. I desperately wanted too and tried to get in on Netflix when they were still doing DVDs on cue but it was never available. Was it even released on DVD? I had similar difficulties with Long Good Friday.

It's clear America never truly respected Hoskins despite his brilliant work as a character actor over the years. I managed to see once upon a time the Dennis Potter version of Pennies from Heaven and I was blown away by Hoskins work - the whole series really but particularly Hoskins. In hindsight, it was a huge blunder when we passed him over for Best Actor for Paul Newman in Color of Money. We all knew it was a lifetime achievement award and that in a normal world Hoskins would have taken the Oscar in a walk. He had won every major critics award in sight, including the Golden Globe.

Hoskins also clearly had the misfortune of coming to America right ten years too early. Most of the films he did in America, aside from Roger Rabbit, were beneath not only his dignity but didn't deserve to be made. Had he comes in the 1990s, he would have been perfectly matched for the era of Peak TV that was just coming - I could have seen him playing Al Swarengen or maybe even George Hearst on Deadwood. Instead by the mid 1990s his moment in the sun was over and there were few good roles left in film. (Then again, it worked out just fine for Helen Mirren so maybe I'm wrong.)