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
father fields honduras
My fathers a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.
actors different clergy
The clergy is in the same business as actors, just a different department.
jobs self giving
The most difficult thing about painting is the self-discipline. When I finish a job, I give myself a few days, but then I have to discipline myself quite fiercely if I want to do some painting that's worthwhile. Otherwise, you're just doodling. It's much easier when you're just told what you have to do.
fashion thinking interesting
I think it's interesting to see how things come into and go out of fashion.
confusion
I don't like no confusion.
real school catholic
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.
drama school might
I left drama school and went straight into a 10-week film for which I was paid $75 I might say, which for 1962 was one heck of a lot of money.
thinking flames feelings
I think you can fan the flames, but I think in the same way that a mathematician is a mathematician - He's not taught to be a mathematician. He either has a feeling for equations and an understanding and delight in it, not only in the purity of it, but in its beauty as well.
worry directors no-worries
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.
thinking people arrogance
Obviously, the arrogance of my own nature in regards to other people's work would suggest that I think I'm talented.
taken scripts novel
My springboard is always the script. Even if the script is taken from a novel, I often haven't read the novel... .
school thinking talking
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.
sports broken noses
I was keen on sports-that's how my nose got this way. It's not actually broken; the nose was just pushed up a little bit and moved over. It's an aquiline nose, quite Irish.
thinking play would-be
I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn't think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.