John Hurt

“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.”

“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 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.”

“I'm fascinated by the business of belief, obviously, because it's so ever present with humanity anyway. And, you know, when you have science, which constantly talks of proofs, you have religion, which constantly talks of beliefs and faith and so on.”

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

“I think love can be really tough. Because it involves ultimately an honesty to the nth degree that you are capable of. Once said, you've lost your deposit. It's best if you don't say it.”

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

“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 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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.”

“I have done quite a lot of outsider figures.”

“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've done some stinkers in the cinema. You can't regret it; there are always reasons for doing something, even if it's just the location.”

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

“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.”

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

“We're all just passing time and occupy our chair very briefly.”