John Hurt Quotes

Acting is the most communicative thing I can imagine doing.

It's communication - that's what theatre is all about.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

I like making people feel things. Acting doesn't seem like lying but like storytelling.

As filmmakers and as actors, you have to find truth.

At the end of the day, you're trying to - be it on theatre or on the camera - tell the truth and be honest in the moment.

Acting is all about truth and honesty, and the sensitivity that's capable of transporting you.

I try to give each performance my own soul, to bring a truth to my character. Hopefully, when I bring that much truth to a character, it resonates with somebody, and it sparks some kind of emotion in them.

There's a oneness to showing yourself to an audience. They feel that. It's healthy. That's what acting is all about.

People always make that mistake when they talk about theatre - the notion of the 'theatrical' meaning something separate from life. If it doesn't relate to life, it doesn't relate to anything.

I love intimacy, always, of performing.

Actors have to make you believe that it's happening for the first time and all that jazz and make it human and at the same time entertain you.

I love acting. It's an interesting challenge to make something that doesn't exist appear like it's happening, and to do it in a real way.

Acting is way of making yourself exist.

Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behaviour.

Intimacy comes from being yourself on the stage and making the audience feel, without trying, that you're sittin' down there with 'em, playing, and that can happen in a big hall, if you have a good audience that want to listen.

Acting, for me, has never been about wanting attention or wanting to be seen. It's funny that I'm in a profession where that's where I am. There's so much I want to express; it's about connecting with another person and the intimacy of what that is, and so I have to overcome my shyness.

There's something about getting onstage in a play where the actor tells the story, beginning, middle, and end, the way they want to tell it. For me, it's the most powerful place to be, and it's the most empowering place to be.

That's what I love about acting and love and drama and art: that humanness we all share.

I liked theatre because I could hide behind a role I was playing, but now, I just love being on stage. I don't pretend that I'm anyone else, I just show my full range when I am up there, and it's very liberating.

As an actress, my ultimate goal is to create a universal experience in my acting.

When I discovered that, through acting, you can speak a beautiful language aloud and have a relationship to language that isn't one that's just eyes-to-page, pen-to-page - it's one that's full-bodied, full-voiced, full-heart... it really opened my heart and made me feel like I could be a storyteller.

I think the actor or performer should be - to touch that truth inside of a person. Touch that reality so much that they become a part of what you're going and you can take them anywhere you want to.

I can disappear into things very easily. But with acting, you have to be in the moment, and it gives me this incredibly fulfilling emotion: being really present.

You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry - but in the audience you feel nothing. It's easy to become indulgent. For me, what's important is the story first.