John hurt

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.

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

I never quite understand why we watch the news. There doesn't really seem much point watching somebody tell you what the news is when you could quite easily listen to it on the radio.

I never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I'm still embarrassed at the word.

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.

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.

It would be difficult to have any unfulfilled ambitions because I don't have any ambitions. I've never been that kind of performer.

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.

I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don't necessarily read in script form anything like as...

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.