Peter OToole Quotes - Page 3

I'm not working-class: I come from the criminal classes.

I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!!!

It grieves us to produce work that is not perfect.

People're artists they're doing something, taking a hunk of chaps, giving it some order, some form, and presenting it saying here is my little song and dance, my chaos.

It was around 1985 before I heard the news of President Kennedy's assassination.

The common denominator of all my friends is that they're dead.

One time in the late '50s, when Peter Finch, Laurence Harvey, and I were all offered the same movie role - the assumption being that we weren't friends - we marched up to producer Dino De Laurentiis's door and declared in unison, 'We don't think we're suitable for the part.'

I love working with young people, which is to me a big kick.

I wish to hazard my soul to opportunity.

I wouldn't mind being a lord.

Anything an artist does is to show ourselves as we really are, which is a complex thing. I don't think that one work of Philosophy or Art, or Letters, or Acting, or Middle Playing, or Tightrope Walking, or Flea Circuses has made mankind better, if by better you mean kinder, wiser, more tolerant of each other. One thing self knowledge. Knoticayton: know thyself.

You talk about auteur de cinema having things in their heads and putting them all across, can you imagine Shakespeare writing screenplays?

I put steam on the table by being an actor. That is how I live. The longer I live, the more expensive it becomes. So I do my work. And I can't be immensely picky. How many beautiful scripts come in one's lifetime? I have had more than anybody, practically.

In the theater you can chain a blue-assed baboon in the stalls and with a good script, good actors, and a good set you'd have what is called a production. With the cinema someone has to know about lenses and fine things. I have no time for the "auteur de cinema." To me, it's meaningless.

If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word.

The good parts are the people who don't make do. They're the interesting people. Lear doesn't make do.

Do you not know that King Kong the first was just three foot six inches tall? He only came up to Faye Wray's belly button! If God could do the tricks that we can do he'd be a happy man!

Where do I begin? I loved working with Kate Hepburn, which was one of the highlights of my life; Working with Richard Burton in Beckett was another great joy.

My own favorite is something called Rogue Male.

Actors have to stay optimistic. The moment we start thinking otherwise, we're dead.

If you do not surrender, I shall be forced to shoot you through the head with a rather large bullet.

I loved doing My Favorite Year, which was great fun, and The Ruling Class, which I made with all my chums.

When my father would come home from the track after a good day, the whole room would light up; it was fairyland. But when he lost, it was black. In our house, it was always either a wake ... or a wedding.

I can't stand light. I hate weather.

It's such a relief for me to sit in front of a tape recorder and not be using it to learn my lines.