William Hurt

“I don't want my children to have to wade through the crap to get to the cream, you know. I want them to be aware that I struggled to live with and tell my truth, and that it was a decent thing.”

“The thing is David is also aware of everything and it's not like you're going somewhere the director is not.”

“If you don't exercise, you don't stay strong. I like to work with talented people.”

“Woody Allen asked me to improv once. I said no.”

“Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.”

“It's been a long comeback. Things were pretty dark for me. But I have a faith now, and it saves my day. I was angry with God for a long time because I was unhappy with me. I hadn't learned to make the distinction between God and my parents. But there's a peace now. In the end, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

“I am constantly asked, 'What's the difference between acting in the theater and acting in film?' The only answer I can give is the space - you adapt to the space. But acting is acting.”

“I want to prove a point. That point is, actors are artists, not narcissists necessarily.”

“The enemies of acting are mood and attitude and other general homogenized disruptive entities. Whereas acting is about action - doing - and unless you can figure out a way to craft in an imaginative reality to which you don't submit, you're going to be out of control. You'll flip out. The job is to be surprised.”

“I had great qualms about playing a man who was living. I've never met Walt McCandless, and I never will.”

“If you're lucky, and not a lot of actors are these days, you get the chance to create a character.”

“There's fear or faith. If you're living by fear, then you're always looking for security. If you're living by faith, then you're always looking for freedom.”

“I'm not there to tailor the role to me: I'm there to tailor me to the role. That guarantees me something, a precious thing, which is creativity. I'm guaranteed that I will have a creative experience, because I will go to it, not demand that it comes to me.”

“Post-adolescence reaches usually into the late 30s.”

“I have never worked with anyone who I hold in higher esteem than Chris Menges. He's an absolute, bona fide, authentic artist.”

“I don't put the truth in a cage. I try to find a way to release it.”

“You can only sit on the frustration of wanting to express something for so long.”

“David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.”

“You get older, and people start passing away. And so if you're lucky - my mom died very young, for instance, and I have friends who died very young - but the point being that, I think if you're awake, you know you're going to pass on. And that the real treasure in life is the long term - relationships that you really value.”

“Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.”