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In the theater, you didn't have any marks. Your instincts in rehearsal told you what the blocking was. On film, they reversed it. They decided ahead of time what your instincts were, before you even arrived.
Peter Falk -
When I go see a basketball game, I'm always in the front row. I always have a table at a restaurant; I never have trouble getting a taxi.
Peter Falk
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You thought the stage, you thought Broadway: that was the pot at the end of the rainbow. The idea of being in Hollywood was like going to the Moon or Mars.
Peter Falk -
The celebrity craze is a little much. But it's good for me, so you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Peter Falk -
I've worked with some terrific actors. The list of guys that came on the 'Columbo' show, I mean they were world-class actors from all over the world - Oskar Werner, Laurence Harvey, Donald Pleasence, you know... foreigners.
Peter Falk -
I still get fan mail for Columbo.
Peter Falk -
Acting is like golf: analysis leads to paralysis.
Peter Falk -
They wouldn't take me in the navy because of my glass eye. So I joined the merchant navy, who allowed monocular crew if you worked in the kitchens. You're not wanted on deck or in the engine room with one eye, but you're good to fire up the ovens and cook hundreds of chops.
Peter Falk
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In order to be totally spontaneous, you can't be too obsessed with accuracy, but if you're inaccurate in a drawing, it will look fake, and when you act, it will sound fake. You have to find miraculously some proper balance between the two, but there's no formula.
Peter Falk -
I wanted to become an actor, but I didn't want to admit it.
Peter Falk -
Hartford had the Mark Twain Masquers, which was fantastic. They had been in business I don't know how many years. They knew how to build sets and sell tickets and put on a play. My day started at night. When I left the office, that's when my day began.
Peter Falk -
I did do my own stunts.
Peter Falk -
There isn't an Eskimo who doesn't love 'Columbo.'
Peter Falk -
I've been asked a few thousand times how much of Columbo is Falk and vice versa.
Peter Falk
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I had two ambitions: One was to be in The Actors Studio, and the other was to walk into a bar where actors hung out, and everyone would know that I was a professional actor and I would be accepted.
Peter Falk -
Sometimes I was in school plays, but only when the kid they'd originally picked got sick and they asked me to substitute.
Peter Falk -
I used to take girls out on a date to Night Court. And I'll tell you, most girls, they got a kick out of going to Night Court. 'Cause you get a lot of laughs... and it's cheap.
Peter Falk -
I had no idea when I graduated from high school and then from graduate school what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea that I was ever going to be an actor.
Peter Falk -
It helps an actor an awful lot when he looks like the part. There's nothing more disconcerting, that makes you more anxious or more insecure, than when you don't look like who you're supposed to be.
Peter Falk -
I don't like getting up in the morning, getting in a car, driving on a freeway, and stopping at a gate where two guards are standing there, then walk into a studio that looks like a bunch of airplane hangars.
Peter Falk
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Initially, they wanted Columbo to wear a driving coat. I said: 'Are you kidding? He's not an English aristocrat.'
Peter Falk -
I never turned a part down when they offered me money.
Peter Falk -
If your mind is at work, we're in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we'll come up with something original.
Peter Falk -
Everybody wants to be a movie star. I bet if you ask that guy would he like to be a movie star, he'd say, 'Sure.'
Peter Falk