Quotes

[on his early days] My father was a milkman. So, I delivered milk.

I'm a workaholic. I love every movie I've been in, even the bad ones, every television series, every play, because I love to work. It's what keeps me going.

People have told me that I came to this industry at its Golden Age. But when I was there, it was just an age.

I am thrilled to be honored by the Screen Actors Guild because I've been with it for such a long time. The Screen Actors Guild is sort of a highfalutin name for a union, and this union was always wonderful to work for. For the rank-and-file of the union to honor me is the best compliment I can receive.

I have an open-hearth face.

I never thought I was salable. I learned in my second year of drama school that I was not a leading man -- I was a character actor. So I thought, "I'd better be the best character actor around.".

[In 2007]: I don't go to the movies. There's nothing I want to see. My wife will go out with friends to see a movie now and then, but there's nothing I want to see.

Working in the mills was hard work, but it was good money, I started out as a laborer making $3.49 a day and later, got moved to an even harder position as a bricklayer that had better pay for $5 a day. And for three long and hard years, I wondered to myself if this was where I was going to end up for the rest of my life. Finally, I decided I couldn't stay.

[When he traveled to Chicago and needed to ask if Goodman School had acting classes]: They asked me how much money I had, and I told them I had saved my every dime from working in the mills, which was about $300. Well, they told me the school tuition for a year was $900. But the man in charge of the school made me an offer I'll never forget it. He asked me if I was a gambler. He said if I paid the $300, he would take me on and if I worked hard and proved I had talent, somehow he'd find the rest of the tuition money for me.

During that McCarthy period, I was a frightened young man. I was working, but I was frightened.

[on being a professional actor, who knew what it was like when he worked with his bare hands]: If you look in those mills, and you do it long enough, you never forget that, that's there to stay because you feel you've being used for, not for what you have here, but what you have in your body, in your muscle. It's demeaning in a way because you're a human being.

[on actors who have moved on to their own film careers, with the exception of himself]: And then they talk to you about frustration. The first play I was in, Golden Boy, from that play, John Garfield, went to Hollywood, became a big star. Three years went by, and I did another play with another handsome actor, Gregory Peck, who left that play and went to Hollywood, became a big star, and here I am, plowing away, working away, this is years going by.

[on his friendship with Elia Kazan that led him to the feud of Mostel]: Zera couldn't stand seeing a guy, like Kazan, do what he did, and therefore, he even took it out on me and Mona. For a couple of years, this is what happened in New York, at that time, it split people who became close.

I never believed that politics had a place in art, that is to say, not in artistic relationships.

[Who was tall enough to play basketball]: While I was waiting for you to arrive, I was sitting here thinking about that 1930-31 basketball season of my senior year. We were playing Hammond High School, and we were just down by one point as the final seconds of the game were ticking away. I shot the winning basket. I'll never forget what it felt like at that moment.

It was a fun time when you were with them, it was just nothing but craziness. And Zera be working in Cafe Society, and finished around 1:30-2:00 A.M., the last show, and never failed. They would come to our apartment, which is on 6th Avenue, four flights up, waked us up and said to Mona, "Alright, scramble some eggs, toast, make us some coffee, and at 2:00-3:00 A.M., we will be having some toast, coffee and scrambled eggs.".

[Who said why he quit his steel job in 1934 to attend acting in college]: Because I wasn't getting anywhere in the mills. When I told my father, he said, "Are you crazy? You want to give up a good job in the middle of the Depression?" Thank God for my mother. She said to give it a try.

[on his friends's and his own experience working in the steel mills]: He said, "You're a fool. You realized there are people here, who aren't working, and having worked in 3 in 4 to 5 years, and you got a job, you're the one of the lucky ones, you got a job, and now you're going to leave." From where he came, he felt this is the greatest thing that could have ever happened to him. This country gave him his job, he could feed his family, he had a home, and that's about all he could expect. And maybe I thought, "I should've expect.".

[Who said in 1962 about studying a script carefully long before he stepped in the role]: I not only figure out my own interpretation of the role, but try to guess other approaches that the director might like. I prepare them, too. That way, I can switch in the middle of a scene with no sweat. There's no such thing as an easy job, not if you do it right.

[on Anthony Perkins in Fear Strikes Out (1957)]: He couldn't throw a ball. They had to hire a real pro, Tommy Holmes, to go out there and teach him how to throw, and he still couldn't do it. He was afraid of what he had to do, run and physically climb that fence. So he just had to let himself go and what happened, happened. It rubbed him out. Though he didn't know the first thing about the game and had to be taught how to throw a ball from the outfield, he ended up turning in a stunning performance.