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Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.

John Hurt

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John Hurt
Age: 77 †
Born: 1940
Born: January 22
Died: 2017
Died: January 27
Actor
Character Actor
Explorer
Film Actor
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Voice Actor
John Vincent Hurt
Sir John Vincent Hurt
Sir John Hurt
Essence
Game
Games
Acting
Business
Whole
People
Pretending

More quotes by John Hurt

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I think you can get better in mathematics on a school level, but when you're talking about being a mathematician, I think that's definitely a gift of genes or whatever.
John Hurt
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My springboard is always the script. Even if the script is taken from a novel, I often haven't read the novel...
John Hurt
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I love working with Lars [von Trier]! I've worked with him three times. I did the narration of Dogville and Manderlay.
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Be true to what you want to say, or whatever style it is that you've chosen or genre you've chosen. Do it well! My criteria always has been that the piece must stand the chance of succeeding on the level it's intended to succeed on.
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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.
John Hurt
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We're all far too afraid of being so arrogant to say Either you can or you can't.
John Hurt
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Anything which retains interest is optimistic. When the characters become disinterested, it's pessimistic. Does that make sense?
John Hurt
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[Bong Joon-ho'] is quite different but technically, he is as clever as [Alfred] Hitchcock. That's saying something. In humanitarian terms, I think he is much cleverer. He is one of the best directors I've worked with. I absolutely adore working with him.
John Hurt
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I am not an enormous believer in research being the be-all and end-all. I get suspicious when I read about actors spending six months in a clinic, say, in order to play someone who is sick.
John Hurt
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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.
John Hurt
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If you listen, you learn if you talk, you don't.
John Hurt
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It's quite interesting, looking back at the first one [film about Harry Potter], nobody knew whether or not it was going to be successful as a film. The books were of course already very successful, but that's happened before, where the books were successful and the films weren't at all. But it turned out that they were.
John Hurt
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It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.
John Hurt
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The truth is rarely true and never simple.
John Hurt
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Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.
John Hurt
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The common misconception is that we create films for ourselves. And I really don't do it for myself. I get stopped in the street by people saying, Do you mind if I say this about your work? Do I mind? I'm delighted. I do it for you. It's not for me. It's my living, yes, sure.
John Hurt
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I think it's interesting to see how things come into and go out of fashion.
John Hurt
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If you put on an Oscar Wilde [play], it will interest those who are interested in Oscar Wilde. But it won't interest anybody else, because they won't get that wit.
John Hurt
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I'm besotted by [Kirsten Dunst] now. I think she's just wonderful. I can't think for a second that however much she'd worked in America, she would never have had the chance to play [a role in Lars Von Trier's 'Melancholia' ] like that. You have to get outside of the States to do something like that.
John Hurt
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You have to learn to cut your cloth accordingly. But it seems to be a human weakness. Once you start making a lot of money, you just join in with everyone else. It's like the banks, and we've seen what happens there.
John Hurt