John Hurt Talking Pictures


John Hurt

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John Hurt once said that acting was just

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"a sophisticated game of cowboys and Indians."

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If that's the case,

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it was a game at which he excelled.

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In a career that spanned six decades and over 100 films,

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he brought life and humanity to some of the most remarkable

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characters ever captured on the big and small screen.

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My name is John.

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I'm very, very pleased to meet you.

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He was never a heart-throb,

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but the camera loved him.

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Especially as those features grew increasingly craggy with age.

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And he was blessed with a voice

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that audiences couldn't help but respond to,

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whether it was dealing with fact...

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It is a deadly disease and there is no known cure,

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so don't die of ignorance.

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Or whether the words were wrapped around fantasy.

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None of us can choose our destiny, Merlin.

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And none of us can escape it.

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I like hearing your voice.

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What a great tool to have.

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Have you cultured that, or is that just the way it has always come out?

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It's a family voice, really.

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I mean, my voice is the same as my brother, who's a monk,

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and my father, who was a clergyman.

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But then it's all same business, different department, really.

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Selling something, in a different way, yeah!

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John often said that growing up in a vicarage surrounded by religion

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always made him feel slightly separate from others.

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He knew he wanted to be an actor

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after a school performance at the age of nine,

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but waited several years before telling his parents.

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That was when I was 13 and they said...

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They sort of said, "No, no, no -

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"you can't possibly do that,"

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and so on. "You're much too young,

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"you've got to have an education" and so on. And of course,

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to my parents, though they loved the theatre,

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they couldn't for the life of them begin to understand what...

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That one of theirs would actually be IN it,

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be the people that you go and watch.

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John's reputation would evolve over the years.

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For a while, he was known as a hard-drinking hell-raiser,

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four marriages hinting at a tempestuous private life.

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But then he was also, always,

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the warm, thoughtful figure

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captured in numerous television interviews

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who seemed to gravitate towards playing troubled outsiders

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and figures from society's fringes.

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I've always been interested in the misunderstood.

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It's the fact that my father was a clergyman

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and I was attached to the vicarage

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and...for that reason,

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you're already set slightly apart from a society

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because there is something because of the nature of religion...

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It is something which people are superstitious about.

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And they think, "Ooh, better not say THAT."

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John first gained widespread attention in 1966

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playing the villainous Richard Rich

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in A Man For All Seasons.

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In 1971, he earned a BAFTA nomination playing Timothy Evans,

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the man wrongly hanged

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in 10 Rillington Place.

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But the part that really made John a star

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was that of the gay icon and raconteur Quentin Crisp

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in the ground-breaking TV drama

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The Naked Civil Servant.

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-Mr Crisp...

-Stand up.

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Have you any other witnesses to character?

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About ten, I think.

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I'm tired of this recital of your praises.

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There is insufficient evidence to convict.

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'It was extremely risque at the time, it was, er...'

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a contentious piece, and many people

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advised me not to do it,

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on the grounds that playing

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a homosexual was going to...

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..end my career, basically.

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And it was my opinion that it was...

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Although it was... He was, although Quentin Crisp

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was an effeminate homosexual, of which his life was a crusade,

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but in a sense, that's not

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what it was about - it was about all the things that went with it.

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It was about the... It was... Robert Bolt put it

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in a letter to me afterwards and said,

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"This is about the tenderness of the individual

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"as opposed to the cruelty of the crowd."

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And that is indeed what it was about.

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I just knew that it was a superb script.

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I did, I really... I thought it was wonderful

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and it did everything that I love in drama.

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It made you laugh, it made you cry, it made you think.

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It was a magical piece.

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It was watched from people, you know, from 16 to 80

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and changed people's minds

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about their own personal bigotry and so on.

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I mean, it really did have a colossal effect.

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The world is full of aborigines who don't even realise

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that homosexuality exists.

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I shall go about the routine of daily living

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making this particular fact abundantly clear to them.

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Do you go to these extremes to test yourself,

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to prove that you're a clever actor?

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Oh, no - I'm not a clever actor!

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All I try to do is to get as near as I can to the truth of

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the character that I've been asked to play,

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that I've been kindly invited to play.

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Did you make any preparation with Quentin Crisp before

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-you played this part?

-I did a certain amount of preparation.

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I remember I asked him to Sunday lunch a couple of times.

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I remember also distinctly asking him if he would like a drink

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and he said he would like a Guinness and after he'd had a Guinness,

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I said, "Would you like another?" and he said, "Yes".

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So I gave him another and then later in the afternoon, I said,

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"Would you like another?",

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and he said "No, any more would be a debauch."

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LAUGHTER

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The sort of extent I knew him to, to that extent.

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Do you immediately pick up the way of speaking?

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Cos you're doing it now. Did you immediately pick up his pattern?

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In actual fact... Yes, it's a pattern that I use,

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I didn't really imitate it,

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because actually it's inimitable

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and also, it would take forever.

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But I notice in the film, that you or he, or both of you,

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or in the concealment that lights the art, that you stop before you

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actually give any answer to a question, almost.

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-Did I?

-Yeah.

-Ahh...

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-Or HE does.

-Well, maybe it WAS clever acting!

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LAUGHTER

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It certainly felt that way.

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But there was more clever acting

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to come in 1978, in Alan Parker's

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Midnight Express, based on

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the true life story of Billy Hayes.

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John played Max,

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a heroin addict enduring a cruel prison regime in Turkey.

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Best thing to do is to get your arse out of here.

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Best way you can.

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Yeah, but how?

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Catch the Midnight Express.

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What's that?

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It's not a train!

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It's a prison word for...

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..escape.

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HE GIGGLES

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It doesn't stop around here.

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That performance brought John international acclaim -

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a BAFTA, a Golden Globe

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and his first Oscar nomination.

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Certainly for a British actor, it is...

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to be nominated is the most important thing - to win the Oscar

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would certainly be sugar on the cake, but...

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It is very useful, because...

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it does give you a standing in America.

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When you're doing a part,

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I was reading that you don't do much research,

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you work very much to the script, what the script presents to you.

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-Is that right?

-That's right, yes.

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So you've really got to then have a marvellous script

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that really gives you the feeling,

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because I believe one thing Billy Hayes said, it was so amazing when

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he saw you as Max, you were so like the real Max in that Turkish prison.

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I believe they thought they'd got the real Max back at one stage

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-when he first saw it.

-You did that just simply from the script?

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Yes, it's not entirely my invention, but between the team - the make-up

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and costume and everybody, and Alan, and ideas thrown in,

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it's...what we invented.

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The success of Midnight Express came when John was going through

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one of his drinking phases,

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which were notorious, even though

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he said they were "largely exaggerated".

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"Your love life and your drinking" - what does that mean?

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I mean, er... It's...

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Come on, you yourself said,

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"I was drinking five bottles of wine a day."

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Oh, yes, I was provoked into saying something,

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somebody made me say something which I just...

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It's amazing how somebody sees one little snippet

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in a newspaper and then...

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hangs onto that for the rest...

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For year after year after year

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until it becomes decades!

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And, and...

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But did you spend a large part...

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One little remark that I probably made because it was rather provoked,

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in a sense, somebody was being holier-than-thou or something,

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and I made some flippant remark...

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-So you weren't half-cut a lot of the time?

-Hmm?

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-You weren't half-cut...?

-No! Even if I was,

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you wouldn't have known it.

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-You know?

-But you stopped drinking...

-I'm cleverer than THAT!

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You've stopped drinking now, though?

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And that was during Midnight Express,

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which I was nominated for and got a British Academy Award for,

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plus several others, so I mean, it's...

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And it is true, it's a fact that I did use alcohol on that film.

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But whether it was five bottles,

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I think that's probably going over the top!

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But you recognise this image of yourself as having a turbulent past?

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Well...

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Or not?

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Well, yes, I suppose, um...

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Yes, it was a turbulent time I lived in, really.

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'60s.

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You know? O'Toole, Harris.

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A lot of those people, you know?

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They were people that I looked up to immensely, O'Toole, particularly.

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I was watching him on TV from...

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When I was sort of sitting up in Grimsby, you know,

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wondering how I was going to manage to do what I wanted to do.

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So I suppose so, yes.

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But I just think that too much is made of it, in a sense,

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but it's made into, like, a way of life...

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That, um...

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As though this is the way you live every single day of your life -

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well, I mean, it would be impossible to go through my CV

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if I lived that way.

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You know? I've made over 80 films!

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-Not to mention the theatre, not to mention the television.

-OK.

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So I mean, it's unlikely that that would be...

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that would be my daily routine.

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I suppose it's really rather like being at school,

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when I was at school. If I was out of bounds, I was caught.

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If I do anything wrong, I seem to get caught.

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You ask me, am I a victim? Perhaps I am!

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Perhaps it comes from way back, you know?

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John was definitely the victim in one of his next roles.

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But it didn't come from way back -

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more burst out from the front -

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and made him the first person to suffer a gruesome death

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in the hugely successful Alien franchise.

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Was the working process, the experience of making the film

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-a pleasurable one?

-Ooh, science fiction is always a tricky one,

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to say... Of all the genres,

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I would say that science fiction was the trickiest.

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The least enjoyable, really.

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There's so much waiting, and also, with Ridley, at that time,

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particularly.

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And Ridley was terrified of actors, so the minute you asked him

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a question, he'd go and hide behind the camera, you know? It was...

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It was his first major film.

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He'd done The Duellists before, that's all.

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But, er...it was endless.

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You'd be in full stuff - full make-up,

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and full costume and you'd get down and work out a huge track and so on.

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You'd then... There'd be a little hustle of conversation

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they'd decide to change the whole thing,

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so you'd all go upstairs and come back

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and we did, I mean, three, four days in full costume, make-up,

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without doing anything at all, you know?

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You can't say that that's particularly enjoyable.

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But what an incredible film.

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But when you were DOING it, it was great. Yeah. Terrific film, I agree.

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It was a completely different sort of gruesome

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that John explored in another Oscar-nominated role -

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that of John Merrick,

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in David Lynch's 1980 film

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The Elephant Man.

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His unforgettably moving performance

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revealed to audiences not a monster,

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but a man, complex and suffering.

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Somehow, he achieved this

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whilst working under layers of restrictive make-up

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and without initially a clear idea of his character's voice.

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I had not the slightest idea

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what it was going to sound like.

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And I didn't have any idea until I was fitted with gums and...

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HE TRIES TO ARTICULATE SOME WORDS

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All the things that add to your imagination.

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This is John Merrick.

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Hello.

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My name's John Merrick, I'm very pleased to meet you.

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I'm very pleased to meet you.

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How are you feeling today?

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II feel much better.

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Are you comfortable here?

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Everyone's been very kind.

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'I wanted to play what he dreamt of being.

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'So, in other words, that's why I chose a rather middle-class voice.

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'Because that's what he dreamt of.

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'He wanted to be part of society, he wanted to be accepted,

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'and I wanted to play that area of him that was like that.'

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The weight of that thing, presumably,

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was quite astonishing, the weight of the...

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Well, the weight was astonishing, insofar as it was very light.

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-Ah.

-It is like, it is like touching solid air.

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And that was one of the great difficulties of it,

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because it has to be so accurate when you're putting it on.

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There you are now, in full gear there.

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Were you affected by it?

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-Affected by it?

-Yeah.

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Well, yes, in a sense, because it takes seven hours to put on.

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So, in other words, you've done a day's work, really...

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What time did you have to be there?

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Well, we started about five o'clock in the morning and finished

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at noon, and then we'd shoot from noon through till 10:30 at night.

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And, er...

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So... During that period of make-up, though...

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was probably the best period of time any actor ever had to prepare...

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-Because you could think about...

-Well, you could think about it...

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-And you could think about John Merrick, yes.

-Could you eat?

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No... You could eat, but 9:00 in the morning was my last meal,

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which was orange juice mixed with two raw eggs through a straw.

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AUDIENCE MURMURS

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Could you hear?

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I could hear, yes. I did manage actually...

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You won't like this at all. But I did manage a way to smoke.

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LAUGHTER

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With a very long holder.

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-No, no, I managed a way of getting the teeth out.

-Ha-ha!

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I did that surreptitiously in the dressing room,

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-without anybody knowing.

-Right, right.

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Throughout this chapter of his life,

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John's partner was Marie-Lise Volpeliere-Pierrot,

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a former model. They had been together since 1967

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and after 16 years, were planning to marry.

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But whilst out riding together,

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as part of John's preparations for the 1984 movie Champions,

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Marie-Lise was thrown from her horse

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and died later the same day.

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Despite the tragedy,

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John fought through his grief and completed the film.

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His determination echoed the main theme of Champions,

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which told the story of Bob Champion, the jockey, who famously

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fought his way back from cancer to win the 1981 Grand National,

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and Aldaniti, the winning horse that had been written off

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after a career-threatening injury.

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You had a great personal tragedy yourself,

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just before you started the film, didn't you?

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When Marie-Lise was killed.

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Did that in any way deter you at all from making the film?

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Or did it in a curious way, did it help to have suffered,

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as you must have done?

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I think the second is probably nearer, it made the determination

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stronger, partly because I know that that she would have been...

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deeply upset if I'd turned it down. If you can... You know...

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Difficult to say that about someone who has died, you know, but...

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In your head you can't help thinking that way.

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At least, I can't help thinking that way. And, erm...

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It just made me the more determined, I think.

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What is...I would have thought was difficult about the film,

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in some ways, is that everybody knows the outcome.

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Yes, I mean, I could be difficult and say

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they know the end of Hamlet as well.

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Admittedly, it doesn't have the same track to go through to get there.

0:18:220:18:26

But it certainly...

0:18:260:18:28

It is a film with immense problems, I mean,

0:18:280:18:30

we're dealing with cancer, we're dealing with horse racing,

0:18:300:18:33

we're dealing with an end that you know.

0:18:330:18:36

And perhaps it's a great arrogance to take on all three at once.

0:18:360:18:40

Here at Aintree racecourse,

0:18:400:18:42

a few days after the real Grand National,

0:18:420:18:44

director John Irvin's task is to recreate the atmosphere

0:18:440:18:47

and excitement of one of the most famous sporting events in the world.

0:18:470:18:51

Racehorses and jockeys and a cast of 1,000 are mixed together

0:18:510:18:54

to make it look authentic.

0:18:540:18:56

As for John Hurt, well, while he doesn't haven't actually

0:18:560:18:59

have to jump Becher's Brook, he does have to look convincing.

0:18:590:19:02

I've never ridden as a jockey, which is totally different,

0:19:020:19:05

you disobey all the rules,

0:19:050:19:07

which kind of pleases my sense of rebellion, in a certain sense.

0:19:070:19:10

You can do everything that the Pony Club tell you

0:19:100:19:12

you shouldn't, if you see what I mean.

0:19:120:19:13

-Keep the horse as close to the rail as you can.

-Yeah.

0:19:130:19:16

Otherwise it becomes difficult

0:19:160:19:18

to get you, the horse and the winning post in on this camera.

0:19:180:19:21

-Right.

-So, as tight as you can to the rail.

-Yeah.

0:19:210:19:24

One of the things that chemotherapy, which is the...

0:19:240:19:28

the therapy that Bob underwent,

0:19:280:19:30

one of the things it does is that it gives you alopecia.

0:19:300:19:33

So in order to be able to do that, because, of course,

0:19:330:19:35

films are not all shot in sequence,

0:19:350:19:37

in order to be able to do that, then we...

0:19:370:19:40

I'm bald underneath everything, really.

0:19:400:19:43

We also have a marvellous wigmaker, who makes me look

0:19:430:19:46

infinitely more attractive with a wig on than I do with my own hair.

0:19:460:19:49

So I'm quite pleased about that too.

0:19:490:19:51

Surprisingly, it was Aldaniti himself

0:19:530:19:56

that John was riding in the film.

0:19:560:19:58

Actually, I've been up on him first time today,

0:20:020:20:05

and he is a magnificent animal, no getting away from that, fantastic.

0:20:050:20:08

Fantastic ride.

0:20:080:20:10

But I'm not sure that I'd like to be doing the whole race with him,

0:20:100:20:13

because I think I might finish up in Blackpool, frankly.

0:20:130:20:16

Another two lengths and a little more separation between them.

0:20:160:20:20

You mustn't mistake fact for truth. That's basically the thing.

0:20:200:20:24

You have to make the piece work as if it were a piece of fiction.

0:20:240:20:29

It has to work in its own right, in other words, you can't just keep

0:20:290:20:32

saying to the audience, "You've got to believe this

0:20:320:20:34

"because it happens to be true."

0:20:340:20:36

It may be factual, but you have to find the truth, anyway,

0:20:360:20:38

as you would do even if it were fiction.

0:20:380:20:41

CHEERING

0:20:430:20:45

It's an unusual film.

0:20:460:20:48

People say, "Well, you're making this cancer movie."

0:20:480:20:51

It isn't a cancer movie.

0:20:510:20:52

And other people say, "You're making this racing movie."

0:20:520:20:54

It's not a racing movie. All of this is part of it,

0:20:540:20:57

part of it in the background and so on. But...

0:20:570:20:59

Basically, its main theme is that of courage, I think.

0:20:590:21:03

It's an upbeat, massive courage.

0:21:040:21:07

Champions was one of the three big successes John enjoyed in 1984.

0:21:090:21:14

As well as the Grand National hero,

0:21:140:21:17

he was a gun-toting professional killer in Stephen Frears'

0:21:170:21:20

highly-praised film, The Hit.

0:21:200:21:25

And played Winston Smith in Michael Radford's

0:21:250:21:28

adaptation of George Orwell's classic novel, 1984.

0:21:280:21:33

The range of skill displayed in these three performances earned

0:21:350:21:38

huge acclaim, and combined, they won him that year's best actor prize

0:21:380:21:43

at the Evening Standard Film Awards.

0:21:430:21:47

APPLAUSE

0:21:470:21:49

Your Royal Highness, my lords, ladies and gentlemen...

0:21:510:21:55

As most of my best friends know, I'm very easily embarrassed. Er...

0:21:560:22:01

Probably stemming from the fact that when I was at school,

0:22:010:22:05

I found it very difficult to come anywhere near the top of the form.

0:22:050:22:11

And it embarrassed my parents and therefore it embarrassed me.

0:22:110:22:15

However, I find it even more embarrassing to find myself

0:22:150:22:18

at an evening where I seem to have come top of the form

0:22:180:22:21

in three different classes.

0:22:210:22:23

Certainly, my parents would never have expected me

0:22:240:22:27

to come top of the form for sport, let alone marksmanship.

0:22:270:22:33

And the last, certainly, they would not have expected me

0:22:330:22:36

to come top of the form, was history.

0:22:360:22:38

It seems to me that someone has been playing with the records.

0:22:380:22:42

It had been ten years of hit after hit,

0:22:450:22:49

and you would probably expect one of the wonderful characters

0:22:490:22:52

from that period to rank as John's personal favourite,

0:22:520:22:56

but for him, his best performance came over a decade later

0:22:560:23:00

in the film Love And Death On Long Island.

0:23:000:23:03

He played a loner who travels to America to meet a young actor

0:23:040:23:09

he has become obsessed with.

0:23:090:23:10

To John's annoyance, despite his best work

0:23:120:23:15

and excellent reviews, the film was largely ignored.

0:23:150:23:19

-What exactly are you trying to say, Giles?

-(Please.)

0:23:210:23:24

Look, Giles, I would like to believe all of things that you said

0:23:240:23:27

about my career, but...

0:23:270:23:30

you got things all wrong.

0:23:300:23:32

Ronnie, Ronnie, listen to me... You don't understand...

0:23:320:23:36

Giles, I think I do understand, and... I have to go now...

0:23:380:23:42

How can you act like this?

0:23:420:23:44

When you know...

0:23:440:23:46

you must know...

0:23:460:23:48

how completely...

0:23:480:23:50

how desperately...

0:23:500:23:52

..I love you.

0:23:540:23:55

'Well, I was upset that Love And Death,'

0:23:580:24:00

that had been so well-received, worldwide, I mean,

0:24:000:24:05

and in depth in terms of notices and so on,

0:24:050:24:08

and certainly in terms of reportage,

0:24:080:24:12

of people that had seen it and talked as I say, in depth about it.

0:24:120:24:16

That it wasn't just a slight understanding of it...

0:24:160:24:20

I was upset that it was not taken more seriously

0:24:200:24:22

by the film establishment,

0:24:220:24:24

such as the American Academy and the British Academy.

0:24:240:24:27

Because it seemed to me that if you had something which was

0:24:270:24:31

that well-received, on the one side, that it should certainly have caused

0:24:310:24:35

a little bit more comment in terms of the establishments of film.

0:24:350:24:39

-But why do you think that is?

-I don't know, I have no idea.

0:24:390:24:42

Certainly, in my opinion, it's one of the best performances

0:24:430:24:47

I've given on screen, and when you're talking about, you know,

0:24:470:24:50

"Do you change?"... Well, I think, do you? You...

0:24:500:24:54

How can I say it?

0:24:540:24:56

You hone your performances to a degree and you begin to

0:24:560:25:00

understand more about what a camera can do, and it's...

0:25:000:25:04

To be able to use it, to be able to get you,

0:25:040:25:07

to be able to take you into the privacy of a life...

0:25:070:25:11

And it was a kind of lifetime's achievement, in a sense,

0:25:110:25:16

in being able to pull that one off,

0:25:160:25:19

and also in a script that I think was a brilliant adaptation.

0:25:190:25:23

Taken from...

0:25:230:25:26

Gilbert Adair's book,

0:25:260:25:28

a novella, which was written in the first person, which is known to

0:25:280:25:33

be one of the most difficult things to translate into a screenplay.

0:25:330:25:37

For obvious reasons, because you are dealing with the inside of

0:25:370:25:40

somebody's head, how do you manage to do that?

0:25:400:25:43

And also without a single word of dialogue.

0:25:430:25:45

And Richard Kwietniowski, who both wrote and directed it...

0:25:450:25:48

I mean, his adaptation was stunning, it was quite brilliant,

0:25:480:25:52

it was one of the best pieces of writing in film I've ever seen.

0:25:520:25:55

So, I mean, I was surprised that it was not... That having had...

0:25:550:26:02

the acclaim that it had had through, you know,

0:26:020:26:07

Time magazine, and Newsweek and all of the big magazines,

0:26:070:26:11

and the big papers and so on, with rave reviews,

0:26:110:26:15

that it was not taken more seriously with the establishments.

0:26:150:26:18

That's all.

0:26:180:26:19

Occasional disappointments like that

0:26:220:26:25

couldn't dent John's love affair with acting.

0:26:250:26:28

And he reached a whole new generation of admirers

0:26:280:26:31

by appearing in three huge franchises.

0:26:310:26:35

There was adventure with Indiana Jones,

0:26:350:26:38

a spell as Ollivander the wand maker in Harry Potter,

0:26:380:26:43

and an appointment with Doctor Who.

0:26:430:26:46

Playing an incarnation of the Doctor himself,

0:26:460:26:49

it was an inspired piece of casting

0:26:490:26:52

that left Whovians wishing it wasn't just

0:26:520:26:55

one way of marking the programme's 50th anniversary.

0:26:550:27:00

WHOOSH

0:27:000:27:02

Anyone lose a fez?

0:27:020:27:04

You.

0:27:060:27:07

How can you be here? More to the point, why are you here?

0:27:070:27:10

Good afternoon. I'm looking for the Doctor.

0:27:100:27:17

-Well, you've certainly come to the right place.

-Good, right.

0:27:170:27:22

Doctor Who provided confirmation, were it needed,

0:27:250:27:29

that John had acquired national treasure status.

0:27:290:27:33

And in July 2015, he became Sir John Hurt,

0:27:330:27:39

knighted by the Queen for services to drama.

0:27:390:27:42

I mean, I'm just very lucky, I like doing what I do,

0:27:420:27:46

I just like acting.

0:27:460:27:47

It's really as simple as that.

0:27:470:27:49

I'm one of the most fortunate people in the world,

0:27:490:27:52

that I've been allowed to do what I really, really love doing,

0:27:520:27:56

and make a living from it.

0:27:560:27:58

Just a few weeks earlier,

0:27:580:28:01

John revealed that he had been fighting a battle with cancer.

0:28:010:28:04

He eventually lost that battle last month, aged 77.

0:28:060:28:10

Summing up the thousands of tributes perfectly

0:28:110:28:15

were the words of his wife, Anwen, who said,

0:28:150:28:18

"John was the most sublime of actors,

0:28:180:28:21

"and the most gentlemanly of gentlemen,

0:28:210:28:25

"with the greatest of hearts.

0:28:250:28:27

"It will be a strange world without him."

0:28:270:28:30

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