William Hurt Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by William Hurt:
I don't put the truth in a cage. I try to find a way to release it.
~William Hurt
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I'm an actor. I play roles in films and theaters. I don't act out, and I don't play people.
~William Hurt
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The perfection in theater is that it's over the second it's done.
~William Hurt
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Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.
~William Hurt
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I was held hostage and almost executed by a man who was robbing us in the middle of the night.
~William Hurt
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Rage with panache.
~William Hurt
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I was very lucky when I was a kid - I travelled a lot and spent a lot of time in Africa, Asia and Europe. I also chant in Sanskrit.
~William Hurt
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My first cousin, by the way, on my father's mother side was John Marshall Harlan, who was a Supreme Court justice, as was his grandson. And I think a lot of my fight and my work to struggle for fairness and the techniques of theater and in subject matter probably stems in some way from some sense I have of his issues in life.
~William Hurt
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The funnel of deep feeling and profound satisfaction in life comes from the capacity to feel.
~William Hurt
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I am just as comfortable in Britain and France as I am in America... but nowhere is perfect.
~William Hurt
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Celebrity is a pathological sickness of the culture. Narcissists on screen being consumed by narcissists off-screen.
~William Hurt
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It's been a long comeback. Things were pretty dark for me. But I have a faith now, and it saves my day. I was angry with God for a long time because I was unhappy with me. I hadn't learned to make the distinction between God and my parents. But there's a peace now. In the end, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
~William Hurt
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Great risks come in long term, tremendously assiduous, very courageous study.
~William Hurt
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The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.
~William Hurt
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I grew up in the South Pacific. Basically, my brothers were Guamanian. I spoke words of Guamanian long before I spoke words of English, and so I've seen a lot. You know, I've traveled in places where people don't have the benefits of American life. And so I've seen a lot of stuff.
~William Hurt
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Fame... it's been a challenge, let's put it that way. It's a privilege and a responsibility, and I'm not sure I carried the responsibility well at times, which is embarrassing. And I've had to look and be disappointed in myself occasionally for how I behaved in some circumstances.
~William Hurt
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Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.
~William Hurt
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All I know is that my best work has come out of being committed and happy.
~William Hurt
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I've been delighted by Cannes and Toronto but I keep saying I don't know how good we're going to be received in America because that's where it's most challenging.
~William Hurt
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I like to work. I'm glad; I'm privileged to have work.
~William Hurt
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I've made a couple of films that were a little too wide and non-specific - like 'The Doctor.'
~William Hurt
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Post-adolescence reaches usually into the late 30s.
~William Hurt
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I need six weeks of rehearsal and women need nine months and it took me 15 years to figure that out.
~William Hurt
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I'm never happier than when I'm with my family.
~William Hurt
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Not to be offensive, not to be capricious, not to be arbitrary, not to be neurotic, not to be an actor outer, you're just trying to get in and you're given so little time to get in gently, but it's always hard.
~William Hurt
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I have a film I want to direct. Gena Rowlands was going to do it with me a long time ago. It's about an older woman who's running a ranch in the west the old fashioned way.
~William Hurt
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The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.
~William Hurt
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I didn't study interviews. I studied acting.
~William Hurt
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I have never worked with anyone who I hold in higher esteem than Chris Menges. He's an absolute, bona fide, authentic artist.
~William Hurt
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I listen to XM radio because I can get so many overseas news stations.
~William Hurt
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David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.
~William Hurt
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I'm not going to party. I'm going to go do something that will make me break a sweat.
~William Hurt
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I demand minimal for paid rehearsal and not always six weeks either.
~William Hurt
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But I am not going to live for ever. And the more I know it, the more amazed I am by being here at all.
~William Hurt
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The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty!
~William Hurt
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The thrill of acting is the discovery part, so it all changes, but it has to change in a way that fits what is written. You can't just wander off and get interested in your own tangent.
~William Hurt
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Where did I study? I went to P.S. 6. I went to Collegiate, Middlesex, Tufts, Juilliard.
~William Hurt
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I live in the county where my mother was born and buried.
~William Hurt
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I'm coming from the notion that acting is an art. It is not a business. It is about building characters, not about selling personalities.
~William Hurt
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Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.
~William Hurt
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I know what I love about acting - and it's the creative process.
~William Hurt
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We get so intellectual that we forget that we're physical creatures.
~William Hurt
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The thing is, I don't believe in most of what's done. The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.
~William Hurt
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The enemies of acting are mood and attitude and other general homogenized disruptive entities. Whereas acting is about action - doing - and unless you can figure out a way to craft in an imaginative reality to which you don't submit, you're going to be out of control. You'll flip out. The job is to be surprised.
~William Hurt
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If you don't exercise, you don't stay strong. I like to work with talented people.
~William Hurt
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I had great qualms about playing a man who was living. I've never met Walt McCandless, and I never will.
~William Hurt
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You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people's idea of that mold.
~William Hurt
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I am constantly asked, 'What's the difference between acting in the theater and acting in film?' The only answer I can give is the space - you adapt to the space. But acting is acting.
~William Hurt
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People who have expertise or the luck to have rehearsal time with cameras have it over people who don't.
~William Hurt
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Woody Allen asked me to improv once. I said no.
~William Hurt
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I very much prefer the balance in a scene to standing out and so you have to make a decision.
~William Hurt
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I am so thrilled by the privilege of life, and yet at the same time I know that I have to let it go.
~William Hurt
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Every single second of extra time to work with other actors has definitely always, for me, paid off for the film. For the project. Every single extra heartbeat you could get, mutually considering the scene, was of benefit.
~William Hurt
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I haven't planned a reaction on anything... If you do, you've screwed up.
~William Hurt
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I have a way of synthesizing. That's what I would encourage any young person to do: take in the ideas, the conflicts, and the world. Watch and listen and live before you go public.
~William Hurt
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What's really frustrating with movies is the lack of improvement.
~William Hurt
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The thing is David is also aware of everything and it's not like you're going somewhere the director is not.
~William Hurt
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We'd like to prearrange our life on all levels. We'd prefer it to be scripted. But it's not.
~William Hurt
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For as privileged an actor as I have been, TV as a standard is short shrift. They have to do it so quickly that they don't stop and take a look. They just shoot. So that's one of the reasons I typically stay away from it. I think art is an act of consideration, and if you're not considering, I don't think you're really doing mankind a favor.
~William Hurt
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You can only sit on the frustration of wanting to express something for so long.
~William Hurt
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I think acting can bring you closer to yourself and help you understand other people.
~William Hurt
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If you're lucky, and not a lot of actors are these days, you get the chance to create a character.
~William Hurt
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The problem with Google is you have 360 degrees of omnidirectional information on a linear basis, but the algorithms for irony and ambiguity are not there. And those are the algorithms of wisdom.
~William Hurt
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I don't have any artifacts of my profession in my house; the Oscar is in storage.
~William Hurt
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It was the moment I learned acting is not acting out. After that light went on, I spent the rest of my life trying to figure out how to make other people realize it.
~William Hurt
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You get older, and people start passing away. And so if you're lucky - my mom died very young, for instance, and I have friends who died very young - but the point being that, I think if you're awake, you know you're going to pass on. And that the real treasure in life is the long term - relationships that you really value.
~William Hurt
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I generally try to think of what it is I want to express and then find a way of expressing it.
~William Hurt
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I am not a famous person at home - I'm just a guy here. I'm a father, I'm a companion, I'm a human being. I am not a public figure in my house; I am not a celebrity. I am not a famous person to myself - I am just a guy.
~William Hurt
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I want to prove a point. That point is, actors are artists, not narcissists necessarily.
~William Hurt
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I don't want my children to have to wade through the crap to get to the cream, you know. I want them to be aware that I struggled to live with and tell my truth, and that it was a decent thing.
~William Hurt
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The point is that there are challenges within techniques. When you differentiate in technique, you challenge yourself; you ask yourself the same question in a new way.
~William Hurt
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Play is play, fun is fun, and work is work. They're different. I work hard; even if it's supposed to be fun for someone else, it's work for me.
~William Hurt
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When you are a kid, you are beset by fears, and you think, 'I'll solve the fear by living forever and becoming a movie star.'
~William Hurt
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You cut off the capacity for grief in your life, and you cut off the joy at the same time. They both come up through the same tunnel. You don't have one without the other.
~William Hurt
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Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.
~William Hurt
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Defeating fear is not a light switch. For most of us, it's daily work.
~William Hurt
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I was a science fiction junkie for a long time.
~William Hurt
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My greatest offering is my concept. It isn't my face.
~William Hurt
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There's fear or faith. If you're living by fear, then you're always looking for security. If you're living by faith, then you're always looking for freedom.
~William Hurt
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I just looked at him because I want to be looking in someone's eyes when I die.
~William Hurt
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I'm not there to tailor the role to me: I'm there to tailor me to the role. That guarantees me something, a precious thing, which is creativity. I'm guaranteed that I will have a creative experience, because I will go to it, not demand that it comes to me.
~William Hurt
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It just seems like that because I do a lot of independent films that don't get to the mainstream.
~William Hurt
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