Early Life
John Hurt was born in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, when his father was vicar of Shirebrook. He is the son of Phyllis (née Massey), an amateur actress and engineer, and Arnould Herbert Hurt, a mathematician who became an Anglican clergyman. Hurt has an older brother, Br. Anselm (born Michael), a Roman Catholic convert who became a monk and writer at Glenstal Abbey, to whose books his younger brother John has contributed. Hurt also has an adopted sister, Monica.
Hurt's father was a vicar at St John's Church in Sunderland. In 1937, he moved his family to Derbyshire, where he became Perpetual Curate of Holy Trinity Church. When Hurt was five, his father became the vicar of St Stephen's Church in Woodville, Derbyshire and remained there until 1952. In 1945, Hurt's father founded 1st Woodville (St Stephen's) Scout Group which is still going strong today.
Hurt had a strict upbringing: the family lived opposite a cinema, but he was not allowed to see films there. He was also not permitted to mix with local children because in his parents' view they were "too common." Hurt's mother died in 1975, and his father died in 1999 at the age of 95.
Read more about this topic: John Hurt
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)