'I never had ambitions. I am basically a reflection of other people's ideas of me'

The veteran actor has won his fair share of Golden Globes and Baftas over the years and now the Bradford International Film Festival has bestowed on him its annual Lifetime Achievement Award.

"It's lovely to have an award like this and it would be churlish to say it wasn't, just as long as you don't let it get to your head," he says. "There's a great story of Ralph Richardson who on receiving a prize said: 'Pride is a dangerous thing, but I intend to paddle in a puddle of pride for the rest of tonight'. And that is the best way of looking at prizes and awards that I can think of."

Hurt is speaking at the National Media Museum which has been hosting a retrospective of his career as part of this year's festival. It's a career that now spans six decades, during which time he has become one of Britain's best-known and most prolific actors. But it's only when you start reeling off his roles that you realise what an extraordinarily talented actor he really is.

His stomach-exploding scene in Alien is frequently cited as one of the most memorable moments by film buffs, while his heart-breaking performance as the terribly disfigured John Merrick in The Elephant Man, is one of the most moving in cinema history and Hurt would have surely won an Oscar had it not been for Robert De Niro's searing portrayal of Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, which scooped the "best actor" award that year.

Hurt's craggy features and rich, distinctive voice are instantly recognisable. But while the deep contours of his face are testament to a life enjoyed to the full, he somehow manages to appear younger than his 70 years.

As with many actors, his virtuosity was evident from an early age. "I was always fascinated with the business of entertaining which started when I was first away at prep school with another boy called Thomas, who acted as my sidekick. We used to do comedy shows on Sundays before chapel and the whole junior house would sit and watch." His first school play was Maurice Maeterlinck's The Bluebird in which he played a girl. "It was a boys' school and if you were small and had a reasonably high voice and were reasonably pretty, you got those roles. It was more fascinating than not because you don't get those opportunities later in life."

The son of a disciplinarian vicar, Hurt grew up in Derbyshire. At 14 he told his parents he wanted to become an actor, which didn't go down

well.

"The problem was I couldn't back it up because I had no idea how to become one and they weren't about to help me. They said it wasn't possible, not because they didn't like acting, they adored the theatre, but they couldn't understand how one of theirs could be one of those. So that was kind of quashed, but it never left me." This desire was further fuelled by three performances he watched on TV in the 1950s – Laurence Olivier playing John Gabriel Borkman in Henrik Ibsen's play of the same name, Paul Scofield in Henry IV, and a young Peter O'Toole – each of whom he would end up playing alongside. However, he turned instead to another passion, painting, spending two years at Grimsby School of Art before gaining a scholarship to St Martin's College in London.

It was a chance meeting with a couple of Australian girls who took a shine to him that kick-started his acting career. "They invited me to a party and I got a bit drunk and was fooling around doing a few impressions and they said those magical words, 'You should be an actor' and I thought, 'Perhaps I should.'"

They encouraged him to apply to Rada although initially he was against the idea. "I'd thought about it but it seemed totally out of my reach. That might not ring true nowadays because people's expectations are much higher than they were then, the world was a much bigger place and it was more difficult."

In the end, he did apply and was invited to go for an audition. "I was incredibly nervous but managed to get through it and they actually asked me to come back for the scholarship audition, and I got one – so that's how it started."

His first film was The Wild and the Willing in 1962 alongside another young debutant, Ian McShane. "It was a 10-week movie, which was

fantastic to get, because, apart from anything else, it paid 75 a week, which back then was a lot of money." His big break came four years later when he was cast as Richard Rich in the film A Man For All Seasons starring Paul Scofield, Robert Shaw and Orson Welles. "I wasn't starstruck with Orson Welles oddly enough, but I was incredibly happy to talk to him and, fortunately, he was very happy to talk to me, he was fantastic. Paul we all kind of worshipped because you could watch anything of his and he was just staggeringly good."

It was his Bafta-winning portrayal of gay icon Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant in 1975 that proved to be the biggest turning point in his career. "I can remember the director Jack Gold, Philip Mackie, who wrote it, and myself sitting in this garden restaurant and like the Three Musketeers putting our hands together and saying, 'When we get this off the ground we'll all drop whatever it is we're doing and make it' and three years later this happened."

His revelatory performance was lauded by the critics and remains one of the most cherished moments of his career. "It was an amazing script and was wildly ahead of its time because the climate was very different, so it became a monumental thing to do and it was hugely gratifying that it became such a seminal piece."

It raised his profile and led to a string of film offers over the next few years including Midnight Express, Alien and The Elephant Man. "They all had hugely significant directors who you knew were going to be on the international scene for some time and, indeed, they were, and I look back with great affection on them. I enjoyed immensely making Midnight Express because we were all in Malta together, we worked hard and played hard and it was a great experience all the way through. The thing about making a very heavy film is that you have to create a sense of humour in order to get out of bed in the morning."

Among the titans of the stage and screen whom Hurt has worked with there are none greater than Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton.

"I worked with both of them – funnily enough, towards the end of their careers. I knew Olivier already but I'd never worked with him before and it was always 'sir', but we got on terribly well and I'm very happy with the scenes we did together.

"Burton was right at the end of his career and although you'd never guess it when you see the film, because he was wonderful, it was like drawing teeth because he couldn't remember anything. This was the man with the great photographic memory, he could tell you screeds of Shakespeare that he'd played but he couldn't learn anything new."

These days Hurt remains one of the most sought after actors in the business, appearing in films as diverse as Shooting Dogs and the Harry Potter series, although he puts this down to happenstance rather than design on his part.

"I've never had ambitions as such, I've never had goals or had a desire to play a certain part, it's always been whatever's happened," he says, pausing momentarily. "I am basically a reflection of other people's ideas of me."

n See a Yorkshire Post video interview with John Hurt at yorkshirepost.co.uk/video