Top 221 Quotes & Sayings by John Hurt - Page 2

I find it hard to imagine that anyone could be intimidated by me.

I've lived publicly and never hidden behind closed doors. Therefore, if I have gone over the top sometimes, it has been visible.

I don't think you automatically become an enlightened person because you are a daddy. But they will change you, of course - their understanding of you puts you in a different place.

I'd never done any Beckett before 'Krapp,' and I haven't done any of his other plays since. I've always felt that 'Krapp' is an autobiographical piece.

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

I knew I didn't want to pursue an academic career at all, which, of course, my father would have loved me to have done. I didn't want to go to university. The only other thing I could do was paint, and so I went to art school because they couldn't conceive of how one would be an actor.

Parents are the worst teachers, if they are good at it and you're not. My father thought I was the densest offspring he could have produced.

I've been incredibly lucky with the directors I've worked with.

Religious people know deep down that that is the most vulnerable area of their lives, and when others question it, they are liable to hit out and feel insulted. You know it is absolutely without proof, yet people still commit themselves totally to this belief. They cannot refute it because it is so central to their lives.

I've worked with people from Fred Zinnemann, John Huston, through to Richard Fleischer, all of those boys from Hollywood and so on, and Sam Peckinpah and then the Mike Radfords.

My surname certainly suggests a man whose destiny has always been injury.

I'd love to be one of those people who, whenever you see them, you feel pleased.

I have done quite a lot of outsider figures.

The English National Opera does have some terrific productions, which are accessible, and they're not too ridiculously expensive.

I like the physical activity of gardening. It's kind of thrilling. I do a lot of weeding.

The difference between anger and deep remorse - remorse is much fatter. It's a deeper feeling altogether. Anger is too easy an escape for my money.

How my film career happened, I don't know. It was unplanned. I'd been in films and TV throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, but it was really 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975 that put me on the radar.

Not everyone wants to see children's films, comics, and supermen.

I have died in so many spectacular ways, and I remember shooting them all, too. I imagine all those deaths will flash in front of me when I'm on my death bed, faced with the real thing.

Essentially, I am an actor for hire. I am not a rarified creature. I do all these different things, and they all interest me.

I didn't want to teach. I wanted to act. It was quite a long and difficult road to get there but very thrilling when I did.

I've never felt that anger is a very powerful emotion.

One thing that is likely to make you lose touch is if you keep in touch with the past too much.

I'm essentially the result of other people's imagination. And that's fine. Because of other people's imagination, I've played parts I would never have thought I could do. Still, I've never had a hankering or an ambition for any particular role.

I don't like it when people shout on stage without any particular reason. It carries no weight.

Acting is an imaginative exercise. It would be odd if you didn't try to identify with the roles you play, but I think I can differentiate between where my imagination is leading me and where I actually am.

I think people should be protected from being made to feel that they want to know what somebody famous had for breakfast.

I'm somewhat old-fashioned, and I still talk about playing a part. I don't talk about my work - 'I've seen some of your work' - there's not much work in it, is there?

I'm horribly self-critical.

I've never been pushy. People have said I should have been, more, but I'm not sure. I've watched hugely ambitious people: the minute they've got a success, they know where it's going, they know how to deal with it, and it all happens for them. Great. But that's not the way I - well, I don't like to use the word 'operate'.

I've done all sorts of children's things before, but none as big as 'Harry Potter.'

I've always felt, and I think I'm qualified to say so because I've won a few awards, that it's a terrible shame to put something in competition with something else to be able to sell something.

I don't care about the length of anything I play, as long as it's a good character.

I've never changed the way I live. I still walk the streets; I don't give a damn. And everyone's very nice to me. But this new idea of being famous for no reason at all? I can't actually get my head round it.

Early on, I didn't intend to have children. I thought it was too difficult a world for them. But then it happened, and I am thrilled to have them now.

I didn't consider myself to be pretty, not at all.

Everybody, I think, that was in 'Harry Potter' was certainly introduced to an enormous lot of young people.

For everything that you find dreadful, there's usually something that is rather marvelous as well.

Everyone I've ever played has been flawed.

Everything that came to me, in terms of the ritzier side of performing, was a plus.

Don't forget there are two sides to performing. Finding the truth, but you also have to be transparent enough for the audience to see it. How many times have you seen a performance and thought: 'Well, it seems to be meaning a great deal to you but it ain't coming across to me?' It is to be shared.

Human beings are very good at adapting to what happens.

I see myself as an interpretative actor rather than a creative one.

Half the stuff I have done which has been successful would never have been made if it had been shown to focus groups.

I love the uilleann pipes and listen to Ronan Browne who's an uilleann piper.

You can't lose your concentration at all. And there are times when you're on the stage, and you've got silence, which is wonderful, but you have to have the confidence to make you realize it's fine. You can't suddenly wobble and think, 'They're not interested.'

I'm not accustomed to doing films without seeing the script.

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.

I seem to watch less and less television. The best thing in 'Downton Abbey' is Penelope Wilton. She is always worth the watch.

Actors are not always the best judges. We have a peculiar idea of what we think we are, and sometimes it's best left to others to decide what we play.

I'm not really a big musical fan. I enjoyed 'West Side Story' when it came out, but it gets a bit tired in the end.

I don't know whether I inspire anything in anyone.

You can see areas where maybe you got a bit lazy, perhaps, or you see when you were really on form. I think an actor is very like a sportsman in that respect. You have periods where you're in terrific form. Everything you touch seems to work and come right. And other times, when you're working really hard, it's okay, but it isn't scintillating.

There are situations where you are left robbed of all quality of life, and I believe it is entirely up to you how you want to deal with that. You can follow the dictates of religion if that is what you believe in, or you can take a personal decision.

In anything really, it's finding the reality. You can't be 'real,' but you can create a reality. And that created reality is what the audience believes in. And that's essential. Because if the audience doesn't believe that, they're never going to trust you. And if they don't trust you, you can't lead them up the mountain.

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

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

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

I loathed school. I don't have an academic mind, and besides I was so bored by my teachers! How teachers can take a child's inventiveness and say yes, yes, in that pontifical way of theirs, and smother everything!

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