John Hurt

“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.”

“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.”

“My father's a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.”

“We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.”

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

“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.”

“I was completely crazy and mad when I was young. I was absolutely in love with the dissolute.”

“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.”

“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 think fame makes people a bit nervous.”

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

“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.”

“I'm very much of the opinion that to work is better than not to work.”

“The things that I've enjoyed most are not really science fiction. They are not much fun to make because there are so many toys involved. They are fun for directors who like toys, like Ridley Scott, but they are not a lot of fun to make. A lot of hanging around, changing this and that.”

“Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.”

“I knew I wanted to act from a very young age - from about nine, really - but I didn't know how to go about it. I had no idea. The world was a much bigger place then.”

“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.”

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

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

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