William Hurt
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.Collection: Amazing
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.Collection: Faith
Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.Collection: Famous
Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.Collection: Dad
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.Collection: Amazing
Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.Collection: Failure
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.Collection: Courage
Great risks come in long term, tremendously assiduous, very courageous study.Collection: Chance
I'm an actor. I play roles in films and theaters. I don't act out, and I don't play people.
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.
I live in the county where my mother was born and buried.
I don't put the truth in a cage. I try to find a way to release it.
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.
Post-adolescence reaches usually into the late 30s.
Where did I study? I went to P.S. 6. I went to Collegiate, Middlesex, Tufts, Juilliard.
Defeating fear is not a light switch. For most of us, it's daily work.
I like to work. I'm glad; I'm privileged to have work.
I'm not going to party. I'm going to go do something that will make me break a sweat.
If you don't exercise, you don't stay strong. I like to work with talented people.
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.
I generally try to think of what it is I want to express and then find a way of expressing it.
I didn't study interviews. I studied acting.
We get so intellectual that we forget that we're physical creatures.
I've made a couple of films that were a little too wide and non-specific - like 'The Doctor.'
I'm never happier than when I'm with my family.
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.
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.
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.
Celebrity is a pathological sickness of the culture. Narcissists on screen being consumed by narcissists off-screen.
I had great qualms about playing a man who was living. I've never met Walt McCandless, and I never will.
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.
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.
If you're lucky, and not a lot of actors are these days, you get the chance to create a character.
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.
I know what I love about acting - and it's the creative process.
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.
You can only sit on the frustration of wanting to express something for so long.
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.
I haven't planned a reaction on anything... If you do, you've screwed up.
You have to create a track record of breaking your own mold, or at least other people's idea of that mold.
All I know is that my best work has come out of being committed and happy.
The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.
I am so thrilled by the privilege of life, and yet at the same time I know that I have to let it go.
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.
David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.
The thing is David is also aware of everything and it's not like you're going somewhere the director is not.
I very much prefer the balance in a scene to standing out and so you have to make a decision.
People who have expertise or the luck to have rehearsal time with cameras have it over people who don't.
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.
I want to prove a point. That point is, actors are artists, not narcissists necessarily.