- There's not much to say about acting but this. Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say.
- All I try to do is to realise the man I'm playing fully, then put as much into my acting as I know how. To do it, I draw upon all that I've ever known, heard, seen or remember.
- My biggest concern is that doing a rough-and-tumble scene I might hurt someone accidentally.
- [in the early 1960s] In this business you need enthusiasm. I don't have enthusiasm for acting anymore. Acting is not the beginning and end of everything.
- They need you. Without you, they have an empty screen. So, when you get on there, just do what you think is right and stick with it.
- Where I come from, if there's a buck to be made, you don't ask questions, you go ahead and make it.
- With me, a career was the simple matter of putting groceries on the table.
- Once a song and dance man, always a song and dance man. Those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell.
- I hate the word "superstar". I have never been able to think in those terms. They are overstatements. You don't hear them speak of [William Shakespeare] as a superpoet. You don't hear them call Michelangelo a superpainter. They only apply the word to this mundane market.
- You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tried to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.
- My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.
- [about his most famous misquoted line] I never actually said, "Nnng-you dirty ra-at!" What I actually said was [imitating Cary Grant] "Judy! Judy! Judy!"
- Learn your lines, find your mark, look 'em in the eye and tell 'em the truth.
- [about The Public Enemy (1931)] What not many people know is that right up to two days before shooting started, I was going to play the good guy, the pal. Edward Woods played it in the end.
- Learn your lines ... plant your feet ... look the other actor in the eye ... say the words ... mean them.
- The lovers of hate, born in fear - Find no release from tension - They spend their lives in a permanent state - Of miserable apprehension.
- When I was younger, if someone had told me I had only two years to live, I'd have gone to an island that was really country--and just rocked it out by myself. But if someone told me the same thing today, I believe I'd probably travel--just to get away from all the noise and nonsense we are surrounded with.
- The things the world most needs are simplicity, honesty and decency--and you find them more often in the country than in the city. My feeling for the country goes beyond sense. I don't like to be in the cities at all. I like to be where animals are--and thing growing.
- [Telegram sent to House Ways and Means Committee regarding No Runways on Vacation Isle - 1969] For more than 30 years I have watched Martha's Vineyard go downhill as a place of natural wonder and peaceful haven. Now they are talking of runways for jets. Is there to be no end to the destruction of all that is natural and worthwhile? Please give it some thought.
- [in 1931] I'm sick of guns and beating up women. Movies should be entertaining, not bloodbaths.
- I still think of myself essentially as a vaudevillian, as a song and dance man. The vaudevillians I knew by and large were marvelous people. Ninety percent of them had no schooling, but they had a vivid something or other about them that absolutely riveted an audience's attention. Those vaudevillians knew something that ultimately I came to understand and believe - that audiences are the ones who determine material. They buy the tickets.
- [on his Hollywood arrival] I came out here on a three week guarantee, and I stayed, to my absolute amazement, for thirty-one years.
- The thing is to try to give the audience something to take away with them. That's what I always wanted to do.
- I'm easy to imitate, but you never saw anyone imitate Spence Tracy. You can't mimic reserve and control very well.
- [on James Dean] What he does with his little side grins and eye crinkles is to say to the viewer, 'Look at me. Aren't I cute?' The problem is, the boy *is* cute, which somehow makes it worse. Obvious vanity in an actor's playing is pure hambone, however you slice it or disguise it. It means you aren't thinking of the role. It's self-congratulation - which is absolutely the worst thing an actor can do.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content