Peter Falk Quotes
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I thought actors were artists and that artists had to be European.
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I wanted to become an actor, but I didn't want to admit it.
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I got a regret: That I started acting so late. I was 27, and guys who start at 18 or so, there's this kinda continuity of friendships they form in the profession by startin' young, I've never had that.
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I didn't become an actor until I was an old man of 28 or 29. I declared to the world that I was an actor. Nobody heard me, but I did declare it.
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I'm just looking to get through the day.
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Sure, I miss some things about the stage. The thing I like is the immediacy. But then I complain, 'I gotta do the same part for six months.'
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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.
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I like stories that grow, that have unpredictable layers. As opposed to Hollywood movies that start out with a lot of shock and noise and peter out into an unconvincing cliche.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Usually, I get hired because I'm tall.
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I used to dread somebody saying, 'Whatsa matter with your eye?'
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Your instincts for what's dramatic are the same whether you're working on a drawing or on a script.
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I used to have this idea that you can spend years in the movies and TV and then, at the drop of a hat, say 'Oh, I'll go back and do the theater.'
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I do figure every angle of a guy I'm acting - but not consciously 'til afterward.
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I've never worried about the grand concepts.
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To be a theater actor, I think you have to do plays all the time.
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The truth is, no one is like Columbo.
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I was a street-guy villain. I was a street-corner villain. I was an illiterate villain. All rough edges.