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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.

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
British
Tradition
Hollywood
Shall
Character
Take
Performer
Performers
Basically

More quotes by John Hurt

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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.
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I stopped asking a long time ago, why would you want me to play that? I'm an actor. That's what I do.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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When you're really working well with a director then you can be as outrageous as you like and so can he. And there's no worry about it.
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Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.
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The truth is rarely true and never simple.
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I'm very director oriented.
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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I love working with Lars [von Trier]! I've worked with him three times. I did the narration of Dogville and Manderlay.
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...
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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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My parents felt that acting was far too insecure. Don't ask me what made them think that painting would be more secure.
John Hurt
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Films don't take as long as people think. 'Harry Potter,' people always used to say, 'Well, my God, do you ever get any time to yourself?' I think I did, in 'Harry Potter,' over a 12 year period I did five days. So it's not exactly exhausting.
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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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[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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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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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