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. – John Hurt
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. – John Hurt
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. – John Hurt
Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral. – John Hurt
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. – John Hurt
I’ve never changed the way I live. I still walk the streets; I don’t give a damn. And everyone’s very nice to me. But this new idea of being famous for no reason at all? I can’t actually get my head round it. – John Hurt
Acting is an imaginative exercise. It would be odd if you didn’t try to identify with the roles you play, but I think I can differentiate between where my imagination is leading me and where I actually am. – John Hurt
Don’t forget there are two sides to performing. Finding the truth, but you also have to be transparent enough for the audience to see it. How many times have you seen a performance and thought: ‘Well, it seems to be meaning a great deal to you but it ain’t coming across to me?’ It is to be shared. – John Hurt
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. – John Hurt
The things that I’ve enjoyed most are not really science fiction. They are not much fun to make because there are so many toys involved. They are fun for directors who like toys, like Ridley Scott, but they are not a lot of fun to make. A lot of hanging around, changing this and that. – John Hurt
I remember once when I told Lindsay Anderson at a party that acting was just a sophisticated way of playing cowboys and Indians he almost had a fit. – John Hurt
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. – John Hurt
It’s quite a dangerous career move to go wilfully on making films that may not find a distributor. – John Hurt
Punk recognised the fact that the establishment had no room. There’s no point in saying you’ve got the establishment wrong because they hadn’t got the establishment wrong, they’d got it absolutely dead on. – John Hurt
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. – John Hurt
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. – John Hurt
I like the physical activity of gardening. It’s kind of thrilling. I do a lot of weeding. – John Hurt
For everything that you find dreadful, there’s usually something that is rather marvelous as well. – John Hurt
To me, nothing ever feels like a sure thing. I cling to that because it’s very important you don’t ever think anything is a sure thing. – John Hurt
Essentially, I am an actor for hire. I am not a rarified creature. I do all these different things, and they all interest me. – John Hurt
I knew I wanted to act from a very young age – from about nine, really – but I didn’t know how to go about it. I had no idea. The world was a much bigger place then. – John Hurt
Picasso was hugely innovative, and, wow, did he have facility, amazing ability, but I don’t think he painted a masterpiece. – John Hurt