Quotes from John Hurt

My surname certainly suggests a man whose destiny has always been injury.

I can't say that I wouldn't prefer to make small films, basically because I think they are probably more interesting in terms of the material. But every now and again, it's quite good to do a big one.

The English National Opera does have some terrific productions, which are accessible, and they're not too ridiculously expensive.

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. Everything you touch seems to work and come right. And other times, when you're working really hard, it's okay, but it isn't scintillating.

I've done a couple of conferences where you sit and sign autographs for people, and then you have photographs taken with them and a lot of them all dressed up in alien suits or 'Doctor Who' whatevers. I was terrified of doing it because I thought they'd all be loonies, but they are absolutely, totally charming as anything. It's great fun.

I'd say the film to avoid is a director's second film, particularly if his first film was a big success. The second film is where you've really needed to have learned something.

I knew I didn't want to pursue an academic career at all, which, of course, my father would have loved me to have done. I didn't want to go to university. The only other thing I could do was paint, and so I went to art school because they couldn't conceive of how one would be an actor.

Everyone I've ever played has been flawed.

As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

I'd love to claim that what I have done in my life is of my doing, but it's not of my doing at all. I've blown around in the wind like a mad thing, influenced by this and that - like a piece of paper: like the boy in that scene in 'American Beauty' watching a piece of paper blowing hither and thither.

I'm not interested in awards. I never have been. I don't think they are important. Don't get me wrong, if somebody gives me a prize, I thank them as gratefully as I know how, because it's very nice to be given a prize. But I don't think that awards ought to be sought.

The first thing you have to get used to in any kind of acting is the ability to make a fool of yourself. If you haven't learnt how to make a fool of yourself, you shouldn't be on the boards. That's absolutely what it's all about.

If I'm in theatre, cinema doesn't even cross my mind. Similarly when I'm making a film, theatre doesn't cross my mind.

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.

Things come in a quieter way to me. It's not laziness, and it's not diffidence. I just know how far you have to bend for work. That's important for me.

I have done quite a lot of outsider figures.

I don't care about the length of anything I play, as long as it's a good character.

I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.

You know, 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?

Half the stuff I have done which has been successful would never have been made if it had been shown to focus groups.

We are all racing towards death. No matter how many great, intellectual conclusions we draw during our lives, we know they're all only man-made, like God. I begin to wonder where it all leads. What can you do, except do what you can do as best you know how.

Also the wonderful thing about film, you can see light at the end of the tunnel. You did realise that it is going to come to an end at some stage.

Early on, I didn't intend to have children. I thought it was too difficult a world for them. But then it happened, and I am thrilled to have them now.

I like the physical activity of gardening. It's kind of thrilling. I do a lot of weeding.