Quotes from John Hurt

I'm essentially the result of other people's imagination. And that's fine. Because of other people's imagination, I've played parts I would never have thought I could do. Still, I've never had a hankering or an ambition for any particular role.

I'd love to be one of those people who, whenever you see them, you feel pleased.

Everything that came to me, in terms of the ritzier side of performing, was a plus.

Not everyone wants to see children's films, comics, and supermen.

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.

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, you know? Whatever your pool is.

I've done all sorts of children's things before, but none as big as 'Harry Potter.'

I've never felt that anger is a very powerful emotion.

Really, I'm only alive out of curiosity. I'm very curious about where we're all marching.

I'm fascinated by the business of belief, obviously, because it's so ever present with humanity anyway. And, you know, when you have science, which constantly talks of proofs, you have religion, which constantly talks of beliefs and faith and so on.

I'm not really a big musical fan. I enjoyed 'West Side Story' when it came out, but it gets a bit tired in the end.

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.

The clergy is in the same business as actors, just a different department.

Parents are the worst teachers, if they are good at it and you're not. My father thought I was the densest offspring he could have produced.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course.

I've never guided my life. I've just been whipped along by the waves I'm sitting in. I don't make plans at all. Plans are what make God laugh. You can make plans, you can make so many plans, but they never go right, do they?

I first got involved with Mel Brooks through 'The Elephant Man.' Everybody knows now, but they didn't know at the time that he was the producer.

It's quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor.

I've never known what I've wanted to do. I've never planned anything in my life.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

I think people should be protected from being made to feel that they want to know what somebody famous had for breakfast.

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.