I'm glad they gave women the right to vote, but sometimes I'm sorry they have the right to smoke. Most women are messy about it, particularly about their lipstick. I don't mind wiping lipstick off myself, but I hate seeing it on cigarettes, napkins and coffee cups! I don't like women with all their beauty machinery showing-curlers, cold cream, mascara brushes. I'd even prefer to not see a woman touch up her lipstick, but I guess that's expecting too much.
If I have to speak in public, I am terrified.
I never had any desire to be a film actor. I never thought I was the good-looking movie type, which I assumed they wanted.
I have one computer that my wife gave me. All I know how to do, and I do it every day, is play Spider Solitaire. And I don't have a cell phone.
When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.
The best wine comes from home, wherever it is.
Love has more depth as you get older.
Michael [Douglas] is, I think, a great actor. He's made some very interesting pictures. When he was going to college, I was very proud of him, but when he said, 'Dad, I want to be in a play,' he had a bit part. I went to see it and Michael said, 'Dad, how was I?' I said, 'You were terrible.' I thought he would go on to be a lawyer and in three months, he was in another play and I went and, I must admit, he was great. I think he has been good in everything he's done.
Really a bad guy is more interesting, dramatically, than the good guy.
If I can get enough signatures, to present an apology to slavery, I will present it to the President. The House of Representatives has already passed the resolution for the apology, but it has to pass the Senate. I think, in spite of all our problems, I think we're in the right direction.
I felt [It Runs in the Family] it was a picture that, after I'm gone, my family would like to see it. It was a wonderful mixture of people in my family.
I remember little things that break my heart. We were coming out of Michael's house one day, and he noticed my shoelaces were undone. He bent down and tied them. I almost cried. To me, it was such a gesture of love.
I know Italians and I like them. A lot of my father's best friends were Italians.
I never wanted to be in movies. In a sense, I'm still a failure because I wanted to be a star on the stage.
Streets crowded with people strolling, or sitting at outdoor cafes. And always, talking, gesturing, singing, laughing. I liked Rome immediately.Everybody was a performer.
"Hail to the Chief" was played, and the President got up and made a gracious opening remark. "I've been in this office for six years, and yet every time I hear that music, I turn around wondering who they're playing it for."
I've played some good guys as well, in Spartacus, Paths of Glory and my favorite picture, Lonely Are the Brave, so I had a mixture of parts in my life.
Listen - pacemaker, crash, stroke. What does it mean? God doesn't want me now. That's all.
I went to Hollywood to test for Martha Ivers and I thought I was going to play the part that Van Heflin played.But they wanted me to play the part of Barbara Stanwyck's husband, so I played that. Then when I finished the movie, I went back to Broadway and did another flop.
I have a great respect for actors like Clint Eastwood, who's a wonderful director. I think two pictures that I directed were not successful, so I decided not to make any more.
I directed two films, not very successfully, and after that, I went back to being an actor and a producer.
My children didn't have my advantages; I was born into abject poverty.
Acting is a youthful profession.
I guess I was a bad boy... Yes, yes, I've had lots of women in my life.
I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.
