Richard Widmark Quotes

Marilyn Monroe wanted to be this great star but acting just scared the hell out of her. That`s why she was always late - couldn`t get her on the set. She had trouble remembering lines. But none of it mattered. With a very few special people, something happens between the lens and the film that is pure magic. And she really had it.

It`s a bit rough priding oneself that one isn`t too bad an actor and then finding one`s only remembered for a giggle.

The more takes I do, the worse I get.

Many of my friends were blacklisted. America should be ashamed forever.

When I see people destroying their privacy - what they think, what they feel - by beaming it out to millions of viewers, I think it cheapens them as individuals.

(speaking in 1976) The heavies in my day were kid`s stuff compared to today. Our villains had no redeeming qualities. But there`s a new morality today. A villain is a guy with a frailty. Heroes are villains.

(on Spencer Tracy) What an actor should be is exemplified, for me, by him. I like the reality of his acting. It`s so honest and seems so effortless, even though what Tracy does is the result of damn hard work and extreme concentration. Actually, the ultimate in any art is never to show the wheels grinding. The essence of bad acting, for example, is shouting. Tracy never shouts. He`s the greatest movie actor there ever was.

I know I`ve made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns. (1976)

I could choose the director and my fellow actors. I could carry out projects which I liked but the studios didn`t want. The businessmen who run Hollywood today have no self-respect. What interests them is not movies but the bottom line. Look at Dumb & Dumber (1994), which turns idiocy into something positive, or Forrest Gump (1994), a hymn to stupidity. `Intellectual` has become a dirty word.

I suppose I wanted to act in order to have a place in the sun. I`d always lived in small towns, and acting meant having some kind of identity.

(on his giggling psychopathic killer in his debut film "Kiss of Death") I`d never seen myself on the screen, and when I did, I wanted to shoot myself. That damn laugh of mine! For two years after that picture, you couldn`t get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh, the guy was such a ridiculous beast.

I won`t have a gun in my house.

I`m a lifelong liberal. I`ve never been a real activist - I just shoot my mouth off. When I knew Ronald Reagan, he was an affable, boring fellow. Now he`s an icon. It`s incredible. Like half of America, I`m doubly mystified by Reagan`s spiritual heir, our current president. (2001)

It`s weird the effect actors have on an audience. With the (bad guy) roles I played in those early movies, I found that quite a few people wanted to have a go at me.

Movie audiences fasten on to one aspect of the actor, and then they decide what they want you to be. They think you`re playing yourself. The truth is that the only person who can ever really play himself is a baby.