I first met John Hurt in 1967, when he was in Ireland filming 'Sinful Davey' for the director John Huston. It was his brother Michael who introduced us, a man who I'd known as Dom Anselm, a young and rebellious Benedictine monk at my English boarding school. The two brothers had clearly made very different choices in life - the cloistered and the contemplative, and the public and Bohemian. Both of their choices of life-style were different again from that of their father, an Anglican priest. John was young, fiery, iconoclastic and immensely talented, both as an actor and as an visual artist. By the time I met him he'd already had much critical acclaim for his portrayal of Richard Rich in the Oscar-winning 'A Man for All Seasons', which had established him as an actor on the international stage. 'Sinful Davey' was a picaresque tale of a young man's rites of passage, along the lines of 'Tom Jones'. It wasn't his first time in Ireland, in 1965 he'd come to Ireland to perform in 'Little Malcolm and his fight against the Eunuchs' in The Gaiety, but these early sorties to this country laid the ground for his later move here.
Like many actors he began his acting at school, and at the age of nine he played the female lead in 'The Bluebird'. Being a boy's school there were no girls, but 'I was,' he said, 'reasonably pretty then and I had a high voice - uncontrollably high - so I got the part. The school, St. Michael's in Sevenoaks, Kent, was a very high Anglo-Catholic, the sort that makes the Vatican look positively Puritanical. I just felt I was in the right place when I was on stage and I used to improvise pieces in the common room with my friend Thomas, to amuse the others.' From the junior school he moved to the senior school, and then did his intermediate at the Grimsby School of Art, where he pursued his passion for painting. It was this passion that took him subsequently to London, to St. Martin's School of Art. It was one of those odd twists of fate that Quentin Crisp, whom John would later portray in 'The Naked Civil Servant', was one of the resident life-models at St. Martin's.

The reason why we know John Hurt as an actor today rather than as a painter, is thanks to two young Australian trainee dancers, Dinah Snow and Robyn Rogers who worked part-time in a Wimpy Bar next to the Earl's Court tube station. It was a place that John went to when he could scrape together 8d for a cup of tea out of his meagre £3 a week student grant. They befriended him, slipped him the occasional burger on the house, and invited him to a party where John entertained them with his Henry Irving impersonations. 'You should be an actor,' they said. The next time he went to the Wimpy Bar they had the application forms for The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and made him fill them in. He did his audition, got a place and a scholarship, and RADA became his home for the next two years. 'It had never occurred to me that people like me could go to RADA. I thought it was just for people like John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier and I simply wouldn't have dreamt of putting myself in that league.' In a way, it's a story that's typical of the John I know, immensely modest of his talents and abilities. Did the life of an actor have his parents support, I asked. 'Oh, yes. They were very supportive. I suspect my mother would have liked to be an actor herself. She organised all the amateur productions for the parish.'

One of his teachers, Peter Barkworth, had a young friend called Julian Belfridge who was an agent with MCA and before John had finished his two years in RADA, he was signed to Julian - a partnership that has lasted till today. John's subsequent filmography is huge, over one hundred movies and television productions, but I wondered if some have stood out for him more than others. 'The reaction to 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975 was extraordinary. A massive mailbag followed its release. It was, I suppose, the piece that changed both the public's and the profession's perception of my standing. I was never very good at knowing that.' I wondered if this was another example of his modesty, not an attribute that we often associate with the acting profession. 'I don't know if it's conditioning or just something personal, I'm not really sure why. But it's such a strange business, if you achieve a good performance it's somehow magicked out of the ether. You're never really sure how you achieved it. I remember Max Adrian at a read-through looking at his part and saying 'This is where I get found out.' It's so ungraspable, you're never sure if you've got it or not.'

Which is very much the case with what he's currently working on. 'The uncertainty is here in spades. Penelope Wilton and I are rehearsing Brian Friel's new play, Afterplay, which goes on at The Gate. It's a wonderful play, I don't think I've ever been given something as good as this to read, but it's never been done before. The complexity and difficulty of Friel far outweighs anything you'd get in film. It's brand new, so there are no yardsticks, we're in uncharted territory. Whatever choices Penelope and I are making are made almost in a vacuum. We won't know until the first performance if we've made the right choices.' Chechov fans will no doubt delight in this work; Friel has taken two characters, Sonya from 'Uncle Vanya' and Andrei from 'Three Sisters' and has them meet in a run-down Moscow cafe in 1924. 'Ah,' I said, nodding intelligently, 'hence the title 'Afterplay''. 'Exactly,' said John, 'as opposed to 'Foreplay', but just as exciting.'

It's a very different experience from the world of film. The text is tighter and denser, the meaning has to be teased out if it's to be communicated to the audience. In film there's little if any rehearsal, in theatre there's four weeks solid. And in theatre there's a real-time audience and no second takes. 'It's a battlefield, and you have to go into it prepared,' he laughs. But at least this time he's in a two-hander, which eases the burden. His last stage work was also for The Gate, 'Krapp's Last Tape', which was a one-man show, a real test for an actor's ability to hold an audience. Anyone who was lucky enough to see it here or in London will know that it was a definitive performance, masterly in its poignancy and it's bleak portrayal of broken dreams. 'To me, it seemed that my performance was based on what I thought I was the obvious way to play it. I relied on the text. I'd never played Beckett before, and I had no preconceptions. Stylisation never entered my head.'

We went back to talking of films and the directors he admires. 'I had an extraordinary run of films in the late seventies. Alan Parker's 'Midnight Express' in 1977 (for which he was nominated 'Best supporting Actor'), Ridley Scott's 'Alien' in 1978 and David Lynch's 'Elephant Man in 1979/80' (for which he was nominated 'Best Actor). I've always thought David Lynch had a remarkable grasp of the medium of film. You can see, even in his early work like 'Elephant Man', his ability to connect images on screen. The story isn't told through the words, but through the images - which is what 'Mulholland Drive' is about.' So is that the difference between film and stage? 'I suppose. In a play you try to illuminate the text, in a film you play a scene to create an image on screen. I remember I once asked David Lynch 'what are you going to do next?' and he said 'I can't tell you, and if I could there'd be no point in making the film.' Making movies has nothing to do with literature.'

John is a very literate and verbal man, who enjoys the use of language and enjoys its precision, a skill he has brought to bear on 'Krapp's Last Tape' and currently on 'Afterplay'. This talent of his has been recognised by his home county, and the University of Durham has recently conferred upon him a Doctorate of Letters, which means we can call him by the same sobriquet as the sixties cult, Dr. John. I wondered light-heartedly if this could cause a conflict with the purely visual aspects his film work. 'I enjoy words, but I also enjoy the business of not using them. There's a great enjoyment in cutting all that out and going with the fluidity of film. It's an area I find fascinating.'

He's been living in Ireland for a while now, and as a blow-in myself who never left, I wondered what were the attractions that kept him here. 'Nowhere's a perfect place and no people are a perfect people, but I feel comfortable here. I was fortunate that when I first came to Ireland I met Garech Browne, and when you went to Woodtown Manor it was filled with poets and musicians from all over the world. It really was an introduction into a musical and literary Ireland, which I think is sadly slipping away with the new prosperity. I also like the fact that Ireland is essentially classless. If you're interesting, then you have the credentials to go to any party, even if you have no money.'

When you look over his list of credits, much of his work has either been done here or has an Irish content. Apart from 'Sinful Davey' there was Jim Sheridan's 'The Field', a documentary on the Birmingham Six called 'Who Bombed Birmingham', 'Journey to Knock', 'Playboy of the Western World' for the BBC, 'I Dreamt I Woke Up' with John Boorman and more recently a film with Brenda Fricker called 'Night Train'. He's been on stage in The Gate, The Gaiety, Andrew's Lane and The Eblana, so by now he's almost naturalised.

I know John to be a man who thinks deeply about what he does, so I asked him how he sets about finding the essence of the character he's portraying. 'Aha,' he said reaching for his note-book, 'I wrote something down on this very point the other day. Here it is: 'the text is a springboard for the imagination, to understand the person. As the imagination begins to understand the person, in equal part it illuminates the text.' I hope that doesn't sound pretentious.' Not to me it doesn't. But it prompted one last question; is that what defines his own approach to a part? 'I think it's an entirely imaginative process; it's not about research. You find the essence of the character using your lifetime's observations of people. Each to their own, but I'm not one of those actors who never come out of character while they're working. Being in character should be like being in a reverie; you should be able to slip in and out of it.'

'Afterplay' opens on March 5th at the Gate with John Hurt and Penelope Wilton, sharing a double bill with 'The Bear' with Stephen Brennan, Flora Montgomery and Eamonn Morrissey.

Filmography.

1. "The Wild and the Willing" (1962)
2. "A Man for All Seasons" (1966)
3. "The Sailor from Gibraltar" (1967)
4. "In Search of Gregory" (1968)
5. "Sinful Davey" (1969)
6. "Before Winter Comes" (1969)
7. "Cry of the Penguins" (1971)
8. "10 Rillington Place" (1971)
9. "The Pied Piper" (1972)
10. "Little Malcolm" (1974)
11. "The Naked Civil Servant" (1975)
12. "The Ghoul" (1975)
13. "Spectre" (1977)
14. "East of Elephant Rock" (1977)
15. "The Disappearance" (1977)
16. "Watership Down" (1978) (voice)
17. "The Shout" (1978)
18. "Midnight Express" (1978) (Oscar nomination, best supporting actor)
19. "The Lord of the Rings" (1978) (voice)
20. "Alien" (1979)
21. "Heaven's Gate" (1980)
22. "The Elephant Man" (1980) (Oscar nomination, best actor)
23. "Night Crossing" (1981)
24. "History of the World: Part I" (1981)
25. "Partners" (1982)
26. "The Osterman Weekend" (1983)
27. "Champions" (1983)
28. "Success Is the Best Revenge" (1984)
29. "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1984)
30. "King Lear" (1984)
31. "The Hit" (1984)
32. "The Black Cauldron" (1985) (voice)
33. "After Darkness" (1985)
34. "Jake Speed" (1986)
35. "White Mischief" (1987)
36. "Spaceballs" (1987)
37. "From the Hip" (1987)
38. "Aria" (1987)
39. "Poison Candy" (1988)
40. "Deadlin"e (1988)
41. "Bengali Night" (1988)
42. "Scandal" (1989)
43. "Romeo and Juliet" (1990)
44. "Little Sweetheart" (1990)
45. "The Investigation: Inside a Terrorist Bombing" (1990)
46. "Frankenstein Unbound" (1990)
47. "The Field" (1990)
48. "Resident Alien" (1991)
49. "King Ralph" (1991)
50. "I Dreamt I Woke Up" (1991)
51. "Lapse of Memory" (1992)
52. "Dark at Noon, or Eyes and Lies" (1992)
53. "Monolith" (1993)
54. "Great Moments in Aviation" (1993)
55. "Even Cowgirls get the Blues" (1993)
56. "Thumbelina" (1994) (voice)
57. "Second Best" (1994)
58. "Betrayal" (1994) (narrator)
59. "Rob Roy" (1995)
60. "Wild Bill" (1995)
61. "Dead Man" (1996)
62. "Tender Loving Care" (1997)
63. "Bandyta" (1997)
64. "Love and Death on Long Island" (1997)
65. "Contact" (1997)
66. "You're Dead ..." (1998)
67. "All the Little Animals" (1998)
68. "Night Train" (1998)
69. "The Climb" (1998)
70. "The Commissioner" (1998)
71. "If ... Dog ... Rabbit ..." (1999)
72. "New Blood" (1999)
73. "A Monkey's Tale" (1999)
74. "Crime and Punishment" (2000)
75. "Lost Souls" (2000)
76. "Krapp's Last Tape" (2000)
77. "The Tigger Movie" (2000) (narrator)
78. "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" (2001)
79. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (2001)