The autobiography of the flamboyant Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, was shot on 16mm film and finished in just 22 days. In 1975, Thames Television broadcast this drama about the life and times of an effeminate homosexual in London and stunned the nation. Crisp was a prostitute, a book illustrator and a professional nude model at government-sponsored art schools — hence the title of his book. The film’s understated plea for tolerance had an extraordinary effect on the viewers. It also turned a promising 35-year-old actor called John Hurt, who played Crisp to witty perfection, into a star. Hurt has no illusions about the impact that the role had on his career.

“Whenever Jack Nicholson is asked about his favourite film he always cites Easy Rider,” says Hurt. “That’s the film that changed both the public and professional perception of him as an actor. Exactly the same thing happened to me with The Naked Civil Servant.”

Hurt has worn the intervening 30 years remarkably well. He has become the Lester Piggott of the British film industry: a workaholic jockey with more credits to his name than Piggott had winners. His shirt is unbuttoned to the waist for lunch and there isn’t an ounce of fat on his tanned body. He has just finished recording in an editing suite in Soho, London, where the DVD version of The Naked Civil Servant is being lovingly remastered. Was it an act of courage or sheer folly to play Crisp in those gay-bashing times?

“Homosexuality was certainly something you didn’t talk about,” he admits. “Most people, including my agent, said this was a fatal career move. I had the opportunity to go to New York with Travesties. The theatre director was furious. He shrieked: ‘How dare you turn down the third lead in a Broadway play for some television play?’ I said: ‘Because I dare and that’s it.’ I don’t know how I dared, but I did.”

Apparently Hurt didn’t need much persuading when the opportunity came to play Crisp.

“I was camping about, half-cut, in Gerry’s Club on Shaftesbury Avenue in those delightful days when it was completely free from the press and you could behave exactly as you wanted. Philip Mackie (the script- writer of The Naked Civil Servant) was sitting in the corner. He said: ‘I’ve written a piece that I think you’ll be very right for.’ The script was dazzling. The most exquisitely written piece I’ve had in my hands.”

One dreads to think what might have happened to Mackie’s script in the hands of lesser mortals than the director Jack Gold. A cinema release would have doomed the project to box-office obscurity. And Crisp was not exactly the flavour of the month in the twilight world of the gay community. Hurt concurs.

“The queer activists were very dicey about Quentin. He made statements such as: ‘However dreadful it was to be heterosexual, it was far better than being homosexual.’”

The phenomenal response to the television showing bucked all expectations. Thirty years on, it has just been voted one of the top five broadcasts in ITV’s history. Hurt not only remembers every single frame of the film, but spent long nights regaling the punters in the Flask pub in Hampstead with its best lines.

“I received a letter from Robert Bolt, whom I got to know very well while making A Man For All Seasons. He began by saying: ‘After the initial shock . . .’, which was an important admission because that’s what The Naked Civil Servant was. You did not expect to see something like this on television at all. It really was outrageous, and ahead of its time.

“It was clear to Robert that this was a piece about the tenderness of the individual as opposed to the cruelty of the crowd. I’ve always seen it that way. The predicament is this: do you let society roll over you, or do you stand up and create a crusade? Quentin, of course, did the latter. It’s hard to articulate the importance of that film coming out on ITV — it gave millions a completely new idea of what sexuality and bigotry were.

“On the odd occasion, even now, I’ll get into a taxi and the driver won’t take any money. When The Naked Civil Servant came out, 70 per cent of the cabbies whose taxis I got into said, ‘You’re all right John,’ and scrubbed the fare because of the guilt of that scene in which the cabbie dumps Quentin on the street where he gets the s*** beaten out of him by homophobes. It affected people in the most extraordinary ways.”

Ironically, Hurt had painted Crisp in the nude in 1959 when he was an art student at Central St Martins College of Art and Design in London. Unfortunately, he didn’t keep the canvases. He didn’t know Crisp intimately until they started shooting the story of his life some 16 years later. The two rapidly became friends. What was harder to shake was Crisp’s influence on Hurt’s new-found fame.

“Quentin was very funny about that,” muses Hurt. “He said: ‘Mr Hurt is my representative here on Earth.’ The Elephant Man came out after The Naked Civil Servant. So did I, Claudius. When Quentin was asked, ‘What do you think of John Hurt as an actor?’ he said: ‘Well, it’s as if everything he plays is me, or me in a toga, or me with a paper bag over my head.’”

Crisp was right in one sense. Hurt’s most memorable parts are rank outsiders who take their cue from that defining role.

“I think playing Quentin opened the feminine side of me as a character. It was a great help. And of course it’s now regarded in a sense as a difficult area. Well, it is in Hollywood. The male actors there are so cagey about it, and yet we all possess it. If you don’t have that vulnerability as an actor you’re really cutting down your weaponry.”

Hurt is now married, teetotal and not the rake he once was in the 1970s and 1980s. Did he worry about being branded an instant gay icon in 1975? “I think there are still people who think that I’m gay. And that even if I pretend not to be, I am really. But I’ve always had the feeling that it’s not of any importance. What is important is love. You can love anyone. I don’t care if it’s a cat. It’s better than not loving at all.”

The sentiment could have been fashioned by Crisp himself.

The Naked Civil Servant is out to buy on DVD on Sep 12

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