Son of Robert Laughton and Elizabeth Conlon. Educated at Stonyhurst, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (received gold medal). First appearance on stage, 1926. Formed own film company, Mayflower Pictures Corp., with Erich Pommer in 1937. Became American citizen 1950. A consummate artist, Laughton achieved great success on stage and film, with many staged readings (particularly of George Bernard Shaw) to his credit.
Interred at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA, in the Court of Remembrance. In the 1928 play "Alibi" he became the first actor to play Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot. Robert Mitchum once stated that Laughton was the best director he had ever worked for, ironic in that Laughton never directed another movie after The Night of the Hunter with Mitchum. For the film Advise & Consent, Laughton based his character of Sen. Seab Cooley on real-life Mississippi Sen. John C. Stennis, and went so far as to have Stennis read the character's lines into a tape recorder so he could get Stennis' accent and rhythms the way he wanted them. Became an American citizen in 1950. Although he directed only one film, The Night of the Hunter, Laughton was a prolific stage director, staging the original Broadway productions of George Bernard Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell" (in which he also appeared), Herman Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" and Stephen Vincent Benet's "John Brown's Body". Gave highly successful one-man reading tours for many years, his material ranging from the Bible to Jack Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums". A highly regarded drama teacher, whose students included Albert Finney and William Phipps, Laughton would play Billie Holiday records for his students as an illustration of vocal inflection techniques. Was an acquaintance of Rev. Felton H. Griffin, a pioneering Alaska minister who founded the Alaska Baptist Convention in the 1940s. Griffin was an avid hunter and fisherman, and on occasion, he flew Laughton to his cabin at Coal Lake, Alaska for weekend retreats. After making Island of Lost Souls, Laughton humorously claimed that he couldn't go to a zoo for the rest of his life. He based the appearance of his character, Dr. Moreau, on his dentist. His character had to use a whip in the film to tame his "creations", but Laughton already knew how to use one, having learned from a London street performer for an earlier stage role. In the opening scene of It Started with Eve, an assistant newspaper editor comments that if Jonathan Reynolds Sr. had lived two centuries earlier, he would have made a great pirate - "Captain Kidd himself." Three years later, Laughton, who played Jonathan Reynolds Sr., played the title role in Captain Kidd and again in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd. He greatly disliked children. Because of his disdain for them and the fact that he had to work with them in The Night of the Hunter, most of the scenes with the children were directed by star Robert Mitchum, who had three children of his own. Discovered actress Maureen O'Hara at the age of 18 and immediately signed her under contract as his protege. In a memoir written after his death, Laughton's widow, Elsa Lanchester, stated they never had children because he was homosexual. According to Maureen O'Hara, however, Laughton once told her that not having children was his biggest regret, and that it was because Elsa could not bear children as a result of an botched abortion she had early in her career while performing burlesque. It is possible both stories are true. Whether Lanchester ever had an abortion (which would have been illegal at the time) is not known, but it is known that Charles Laughton was gay. That fact, however, would not have precluded parenthood. There is, additionally, Laughton's reputed great dislike of children. It is possible he said what he did to Maureen O'Hara because he knew she was a VERY devout Roman Catholic and, having been schooled by Jesuits himself, he wanted to play a little joke on her sensibilities. Served in First World War. In spite of having Public School education and Officer Training (in Stonyhurst College's OTC), he chose to join the Army as a private in 1917. He served with the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment, and later with 7th Bn. Northamptonshire Regiment in the Western Front. Shortly before the armistice he became a casualty due to mustard gas. Was the stand-in for Ed Sullivan when Elvis Presley's first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.