John Hurt
John Hurt
Sir John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor whose career has spanned six decades. He initially came to prominence for his supporting role as Richard Rich in the film A Man for All Seasons. Since then he has played leading roles as Quentin Crisp in the film The Naked Civil Servant, John Merrick in David Lynch's biopic The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in the dystopian drama Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in the Stephen Frears drama The Hit, and Stephen...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth22 January 1940
introduced
Everybody, I think, that was in 'Harry Potter' was certainly introduced to an enormous lot of young people.
built far gotten overhead structures work
You can see the overhead structures that have been built up to the interstate. We've gotten about as far as we can go and now we have to work over the interstate.
beauty blowing blown boy claim influenced life love mad paper piece scene watching wind
I'd love to claim that what I have done in my life is of my doing, but it's not of my doing at all. I've blown around in the wind like a mad thing, influenced by this and that - like a piece of paper: like the boy in that scene in 'American Beauty' watching a piece of paper blowing hither and thither.
call maybe nerd today
maybe what we today would call a nerd or a geek.
directors great obvious prefer relief whom work
Very, 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. It's a great relief to feel that you're working with someone rather than for someone.
essence games people
Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.
irony life-is paradox
Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.
arrogant
We're all far too afraid of being so arrogant to say "Either you can or you can't."
forgotten enough said
As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.
confusion
I don't like no confusion.
relief feels tested
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.
tunnels light realizing
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.
bad efforts flowering itself
Where humanity is going to find itself in, say, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years would be very difficult to predict, I think. There are moments, of course, when you think that it's going from bad to worse, but there are other moments when you think that human efforts are really flowering into something really fantastic.
carbon copy creeping last thinking time toward
We're not approaching it to make a carbon copy of what we did last time but we've tended to come back to the way we were thinking then. More to the point, I'm creeping up toward being old enough for it now.