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I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn't think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.

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
Thinking
Characteristics
Somebody
Virtue
Difficult
Didn
Play
Would
Redeeming
Think
Virtues

More quotes by 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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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.
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Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.
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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.
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Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances. And it's being able - I can't tell you how one does, but one tries to read those circumstances correctly.
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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.
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By the time I came to do the final ones [Harry Potter's film], I was working on something that was massively successful. There was a huge difference in indulgence and all sorts of stuff. A very big difference in peoples' attitudes. They were very pleased with themselves. In human terms, it was quite interesting to see the difference.
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We're all far too afraid of being so arrogant to say Either you can or you can't.
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Often I don't read novels. The script is more important, that's the springboard to your imagination, really. Peripheral information can be interesting to read but you can't use it when it's not in the script.
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The British tradition, basically, is to go to the character. And the Hollywood tradition, shall we say, is basically to take the character to the performer.
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[Alfred] Hitchcock was very interested in the image on the screen.As is any good cinema director. That is the language they speak. It is not literature, it is images on screen.
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I've spent a great deal of my life doing independent film, and that is partly because the subject matter interests me and partly because that is the basis of the film industry. That's where the film-makers come from, it's where they start and sometimes its where they should have stayed.
John Hurt
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I find myself more interested in producing. Not because I'm interested in the financial side of it, but just getting together the right elements to make a film, that side of production. I would not be good on the financial side. It would be a disaster from the beginning.
John Hurt
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If you do an interview in 1960, something it's bound to change by the year 2000. And if it doesn't, then there's something drastically wrong.
John Hurt
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The truth is rarely true and never simple.
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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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My parents felt that acting was far too insecure. Don't ask me what made them think that painting would be more secure.
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I never quite understand why we watch the news. There doesn't really seem much point watching somebody tell you what the news is when you could quite easily listen to it on the radio...
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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.
John Hurt
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It's a great relief to feel that you're working with someone rather than for someone. You don't feel that you're being tested, as it were.
John Hurt