Quote

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.

John Hurt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Shall
Character
Take
Performer
Performers
Basically
British
Tradition
Hollywood

More quotes by John Hurt

Image
Elephant Man [movie] was much more difficult physically. This had a couple of days. It was quite tricky. I had my leg strapped up behind me and I am a little older now. It was all marvelous, though. He [Bong Joon-ho] is one of the most fabulous directors in the world.
John Hurt
Image
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
Image
I loathed school. I don't have an academic mind, and besides I was so bored by my teachers! How teachers can take a child's inventiveness and say yes, yes, in that pontifical way of theirs, and smother everything!
John Hurt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Lotte Lenya was all emotion. She wasn't anything but emotion. She was not an intellectual.
John Hurt
Image
I think [ Lars Von Trier] is a fantastic filmmaker. No question. You've got to be ready for him. He's sharp and he's got a sharp tongue and I love that. He doesn't mind it back.
John Hurt
Image
I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time, to say high Anglo-Catholic would be a real English understatement.
John Hurt
Image
[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
Image
Anything which retains interest is optimistic. When the characters become disinterested, it's pessimistic. Does that make sense?
John Hurt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I don't like no confusion.
John Hurt
Image
My fathers a clergyman, and he was in the mission field for a certain amount of time in British Honduras, which is now Belize.
John Hurt
Image
Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.
John Hurt
Image
In the States it's more and more difficult to get an independent film off the ground, and you certainly wont get the opportunity to play something like that in a studio movie.
John Hurt
Image
I never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I'm still embarrassed at the word.
John Hurt
Image
If you listen, you learn if you talk, you don't.
John Hurt
Image
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