John Hurt Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We're all just passing time and occupy our chair very briefly.
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It would be difficult to have any unfulfilled ambitions because I don't have any ambitions. I've never been that kind of performer.
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My surname certainly suggests a man whose destiny has always been injury.
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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.
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I've never felt that anger is a very powerful emotion.
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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.
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Not everyone wants to see children's films, comics, and supermen.
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Very, very broadly speaking, you can put directors into two areas: One for whom you work, and the other with whom you work. And I prefer the latter, for obvious reasons. It's a great relief to feel that you're working with someone rather than for someone.
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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.
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I don't like it when people shout on stage without any particular reason. It carries no weight.
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Where humanity is going to find itself in, say, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years would be very difficult to predict, I think. There are moments, of course, when you think that it's going from bad to worse, but there are other moments when you think that human efforts are really flowering into something really fantastic.
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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.
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Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.
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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.
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I didn't consider myself to be pretty, not at all.
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I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit.
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I'd love to be one of those people who, whenever you see them, you feel pleased.
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Each day, as you get older, there is a new perspective on life. It's a progression of some sort.
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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.
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Essentially, I am an actor for hire. I am not a rarified creature. I do all these different things, and they all interest me.
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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'.