Tony Earnshaw: Gentle art of actors picking and choosing the right parts

The credit he'd long buried was Spectre, a tale of demonologists set among London's aristocracy, circa 1977, and co-starring Hurt alongside Gig Young and Robert Culp, who sadly died this week. Hurt played a decadent rich playboy alongside Culp's Sherlockian demon hunter, while Young was Dr Watson in all but name.

Hurt brushed off talk of the film and later admitted it was something he should never have done. But actors, like the rest of us, have to eat.

Which brings me to news of John Malkovich being cast in Transformers 3. He'll share the screen with Frances McDormand, another actor of substance who really should know better.

I considered actors and their choices while watching Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Who was the eyepatch-wearing bad guy serving as the Red Queen's lackey? Only Crispin Glover, an actor of rare talent who was once destined for a career similar to that of Johnny Depp.

Sadly, Glover possesses none of Depp's good looks or easy charm. He's quirky, odd and creepy in a vaguely cadaverous sort of way. Plus, who is ever going to turn down an offer from Tim Burton?

Comic book movies are increasingly infesting our cinemas, and it seems no decent actor is immune from their clutches. If it's not Eric Bana and Nick Nolte in Hulk, it's Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns or Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman in the Batman franchise.

Now 56-year-old Malkovich has sold his artistic soul to play second fiddle to giant CGI robots. This is the man who joined Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theater Company, who enjoyed stage triumphs in plays by Sam Shepard and Arthur Miller, who landed an Academy Award nomination for his first major film role and who can still produce magic on the screen. Yet he's going to be in Transformers 3.

But back to John Hurt. One journalist waiting to interview this quintessentially English cinematic treasure gleefully revealed he had questions lined up about Hurt's role in the forthcoming Tron Legacy, a late sequel to the 1982 original.

I mentioned it to Hurt, who frowned and revealed that he isn't actually in it. These days he picks and chooses carefully and plays in only the films that catch his eye. He doesn't need to make televisual tat like Spectre and has no intention of doing so. Tron Legacy falls into the same category.

John Malkovich, once the acclaimed star of The Killing Fields and Dangerous Liaisons, could learn a thing or two from Hurt's decision not to go slumming.

Maybe Malkovich is hungry. Judging by his decision to make Transformers 3, he must be starving to death...

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