John Hurt Quotes

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I'm sorry to tell you I can't describe.

If you listen, you learn; if you talk, you don't.

As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

Each day, as you get older, there is a new perspective on life. It's a progression of some sort.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

I never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I'm still embarrassed at the word.

Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.

Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.

The only concession you can make is to what you believe is right.

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course.

I think it's interesting to see how things come into and go out of fashion.

Obviously, the arrogance of my own nature in regards to other people's work would suggest that I think I'm talented.

Also the wonderful thing about film, you can see light at the end of the tunnel. You did realize that it is going to come to an end at some stage.

When you're really working well with a director then you can be as outrageous as you like and so can he. And there's no worry about it.

I am really the victim of other people's imagination.

I think, you have to forget about intellect, to a degree. Intuition is very important when you're working with a lens, I believe, for what the lens is doing, too.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really. And imaginations prosper in different circumstances. And it's being able - I can't tell you how one does, but one tries to read those circumstances correctly.

You collect as much information as you can and then you put it into the mulberry of your mind and hope that you come up with a decent wine. Sometimes you do; sometimes you don't.

It's a great relief to feel that you're working with someone rather than for someone. You don't feel that you're being tested, as it were.

Anything which retains interest is optimistic. When the characters become disinterested, it's pessimistic. Does that make sense?

I've never known what I've wanted to do. I've never planned anything in my life.

I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit.

The clergy is in the same business as actors, just a different department.

It would be difficult to have any unfulfilled ambitions because I don't have any ambitions. I've never been that kind of performer.

I never quite understand why we watch the news. There doesn't really seem much point watching somebody tell you what the news is when you could quite easily listen to it on the radio...

My parents felt that acting was far too insecure. Don't ask me what made them think that painting would be more secure.

If I'm in theatre, cinema doesn't even cross my mind. Similarly when I'm making a film, theatre doesn't cross my mind.

People say you never retire in this [film] business and I say, well, not until they retire you.

I'm really the addition of other peoples' imagination, quite honestly. It's what they see me as, and I'm very happy to comply. I find things are more varied that way.

I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time, to say high Anglo-Catholic would be a real English understatement.

I don't like no confusion.

A very, very impressive director, Tomas Alfredson. It's only his second film [ 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'], but he's a real find.

I am not an enormous believer in research being the be-all and end-all. I get suspicious when I read about actors spending six months in a clinic, say, in order to play someone who is sick.

If you do an interview in 1960, something it's bound to change by the year 2000. And if it doesn't, then there's something drastically wrong.

Very broadly speaking, you can put directors into two areas: One for whom you work, and the other with whom you work. And I prefer the latter, for obvious reasons.

I have lots of favourite memories but I can't say that I have a favourite film.

I think you can get better in mathematics on a school level, but when you're talking about being a mathematician, I think that's definitely a gift of genes or whatever.

I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn't think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.

My mother's father drank and her mother was an unhappy, neurotic woman, and I think she has lived all her life afraid of anyone who drinks for fear something like that might happen to her.

It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.

The first film is everything you want to say and how you want to say it. Lots of directors will do that and do it really well, but the second film is not so easy.

I think [ Lars Von Trier] is a fantastic filmmaker. No question. You've got to be ready for him. He's sharp and he's got a sharp tongue and I love that. He doesn't mind it back.

The big problem with literature is people tend to take the dialogue from the book, forgetting that everything that surrounds it is literate, therefore not knowing quite how to put that on screen.

I do what interests me when I'm invited and do it as well as I know how and try to get better. That's all.

We shot ['Sailcloth'] five days down in Cornwall, and you couldn't have asked for a more beautiful place. It was a couple of tough days at sea, but when I say tough it was still enjoyable.

It's an immensely competitive business, and I can tell you the older you get, the parts are fewer, and the people who are proven performers are greater.

The great joke is that a realist is an optimistic pessimist. That's very witty. Whether it's truthful or not, that I don't know.

Some directors involve waiting, and if you want to work with that particular director you're going to have to hang around.

'The Elephant Man' was hugely enjoyable to do. I thought the one stage, when Chris Tucker did the first makeup and it took 12 hours, I thought they'd actually found a way for me not to enjoy filming.

I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.