An excited Paul Farren set out to interview acting legend John Hurt. Despite the best efforts of photographers, phone-calls and tea-breaks, he gleans some gems of wisdom about Orson Welles and David Lynch, among others.

It's that time again when I get to interview someone I greatly admire: John Hurt. So I'm as nervous as a turkey at Christmas time and I only have half an hour to ask pertinent questions that will form the basis for an article about the man and his career.

By junket standards, a half hour time slot is not bad. Technically we are supposed to be concentrating on his impressive new film Shooting Dogs, but there is so much else to talk about: A Man for All Seasons, The Naked Civil Servant, I, Claudius, 10 Rillington Place, The Elephant Man, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Alien, The Hit, White Mischief, Heaven's Gate, Dead Man, and Hellboy, to name but a few. Hurt has worked with some of the finest directors ever to put anything on the silver screen, including the likes of John Huston, Fred Zinnemann, David Lynch and Sam Peckinpah - so time is precious.

We enter a small room in the Brooks Hotel where Mr Hurt is seeing off a photographer, still packing his equipment away. Nervous greetings are exchanged and Siobhan – the PR woman – leaves me with Mr Hurt, the photographer, and Alan – a friend of mine who also happens to be a photographer, about to do me the favour of photographing Hurt for the magazine. It turns out Alan knows the photographer and they start chatting. Hurt joins in. I am already painfully aware of time being eaten up with having a photo taken, and now smalltalk is breaking out around me. Eventually the other photographer is gone, and Alan is standing on the coffee table, using a spotlight on the ceiling as his only light source, with a forty year-old twin lens camera –- a spare sight compared to the high tech lighting kit that has just left the room. Hurt comments on the lack of equipment, and thinks he will have trouble lighting it with the available light. Alan assures him it won't be an issue, but I'm not sure if Hurt is convinced. A bit of marching around the low coffee table and calling instructions to Hurt about what way he wants him to face and the work is done. I can't help but admire the workmanlike fashion of it all, and that my friend has been in the room five minutes and he's telling John Hurt what to do. Alan puts the camera away and tells Hurt jokingly, 'I'm crap but I'm quick'. Hurt responds laughing, 'typical Irish, always playing themselves down'.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 110.