Posthomously received the 'Stella Adler' Award for Lifetime
Achievement, presented by his friend and neighbor Warren Beatty to his
son Miko C. Brando.
Brando's decision to send a Mexican actress named Maria Cruz - calling
herself Sacheen Littlefeather - to refuse his Best Actor Oscar for The
Godfather (1972) at the The 45th Annual Academy Awards (1973) (TV)
brought widespread condemnation. At the ceremony Clint Eastwood
remarked he didn't know whether he should dedicate the Oscar he was
presenting to "all the cowboys shot in John Ford's westerns". Michael
Caine, nominated for his performance in Sleuth (1972), angrily
condemned Brando's actions while Rock Hudson remarked, "Sometimes to be
eloquent is to be silent.".
He was a close friend of the reclusive singer Michael Jackson for many
years, even appearing in his music video "You Rock My World" in 2001.
The last time Brando left his bungalow in Hollywood was to stay at
Jackson's Neverland Ranch in the summer of 2003.
Brando's children: 1) From first marriage (with Anna Kashfi) =
Christian Devi Brando aka Gary Brown (b. 1958); 2) From second marriage
(with Movita Castaneda) = Miko C. Brando (b. 1961) and Rebecca Brando
Kotlinzky (b. 1967); 3) From third marriage (with Tarita Teriipia) =
Simon Teihotu Brando (b. 1967), Stefano Brando (b. 1967) and Tarita
Cheyenne Brando (b. 1970 and d. 1995); 4) From liaisons with Maria
Christina Ruiz, his maid = Ninna Priscilla Brando (b. 1989), Myles
Jonathan Brando (b. 1992) and Timothy Gahan Brando (b. 1994). Also
adopted 3 children: Petra Brando-Corval (daughter of Brando's assistant
Caroline Barrett), Maimiti Brando and Raiatua Brando.
Brando's character Ken Wilcheck in his cinema debut The Men (1950)
(1950) has the nickname "Bud", which was his own nickname as he was a
"junior". (Brando's father, Marlon Brando Sr., later worked for his
company Pennebaker Productions, which was named after his mother, the
former Dorothy Pennebaker.) The only other film in which Brando goes by
the name which his family and intimate friends called him is The Night
of the Following Day (1968) (1968).
After he received his first Academy Award nomination (Best Actor for A
Streetcar Named Desire (1951)), Brando impishly told the Hollywood
press corps that he would not attend the ceremony but would send a cab
driver in his place to pick up the Oscar, should he win the award.
Indeed, Brando did not attend, and some columnists claimed that a cabby
actually was in attendance in Brando's seat at Los Angeles' RKO
Pantages Theatre the night of ceremony of March 20, 1952. Alas, Brando
was the sole "Steetcar" acting nominee not to win that night as
Humphrey Bogart took home the gold, so the question can never be
satisfactorily resolved.
Jay Kantor was a lowly mailroom clerk at Lew Wasserman's talent agency
Music Corp. of America when he was sent to pick up Brando and drive him
to the agency. Impressed by the young man, Brando promptly appointed
him his agent (Kantor was the inspiration for the character of Teddy Z
in the 1989 TV series "The Famous Teddy Z" (1989)).
Sean Penn told writer Charles Bukowski that Brando put scripts from
producers into his freezer, in order to use them as targets in skeet
shooting. Brando would take the frozen scripts and have them tossed in
the air into the canyon below his home at night, and then proceed to
blast them into smithereens with a shotgun while they were on the fly.
By freezing the scripts, the pages were stiff and made for better "clay
pigeon" substitutes. The practice is mentioned in one of Bukowski's
poems. Bukowski also wrote about Brando in his short story "You Kissed
Lilly", in which Lilly masturbates while watching Brando in a movie on
television. The story is part of the collection "Hot Water Music"
(1983).
Turned down the role of Vulcan in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
(1988). Director Terry Gilliam was summoned to Brando's Mulholland Dr.
home in Los Angeles to discuss the part, but it became apparent that
Brando really wasn't interested in taking the part. Nonetheless,
Gilliam treasured the time he got to spend with Brando. The part later
was played by Oliver Reed, who spent his time drinking and trying to
seduce Uma Thurman, who was a virgin at the time.
Was Oliver Stone's first choice for the role of Richard Boyle in
Salvador (1986). However, Brando had become notoriously reclusive by
the time the project got underway and turned down the role.
In Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Movie Character's of all time, he
won the top spot for his performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather.
He was an avid user of the Internet in his final years, often going into chat rooms to start arguments.
Subject of the song "I'm Stuck in a Condo with Mr. Marlon Brando" by The Dickies.
Grandfather of Tuki Brando, son of Brando's daughter Cheyenne..
Originally considered too young at 23 to play Stanley Kowalski in the
Broadway version of "A Streetcar Named Desire", and the producers of
the show tried to get 34-year-old Burt Lancaster, newly a huge star in
movies thanks to The Killers (1946). When Lancaster was unable to get
permission from the film studio, Brando was given the part and became
an overnight sensation.
Turned down Edmund Purdom's role in The Egyptian (1954).
Turned down Gary Cooper's Oscar winning role in High Noon (1952).
Turned down Charlton Heston's Oscar winning role in Ben-Hur (1959).
He was originally cast in John Wayne's role as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror (1956), but backed out at the last minute.
A large part of his estate was bought by entrepreneur Keya Morgan.
Brando was sought for the role of Bull McCabe in The Field (1990), but Richard Harris was cast instead.
Grandfather of Prudence Brando and Shane Brando, children of Brando's son Miko C. Brando.
Is related to four presidents of the United States: James Madison, John
Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Jimmy Carter; and to Gen. George S. Patton.
He was sought for the role of O'Brien the interrogator in Nineteen
Eighty-Four (1984), along with Sean Connery and Paul Scofield. Scofield
accepted the part, but had to drop out of shooting after breaking his
arm and was replaced by Richard Burton.
Turned down Stacy Keach's role in American History X (1998).
In 1999 the American Film Institute named him the fourth Greatest Male Star of All Time.
His Mulholland Drive home once shared a driveway with his The Missouri Breaks (1976) co-star Jack Nicholson's home.
Mentioned in The Killers' "The Ballad of Michael Valentine".
Brando's first Oscar nomination for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
marked his first of 4 consecutive nominations, a feat he shares with
Jennifer Jones (1943-46), Thelma Ritter (1950-53), Elizabeth Taylor
(1957-60) and Al Pacino (1972-75).
His favorite comedians were Charles Chaplin, Stan Laurel & Oliver
Hardy, W.C. Fields, Wally Cox, Woody Allen, and Don Rickles. He did,
however, consider The Marx Brothers "embarassing".
Former brother-in-law of Eliot Asinof.
Encouraged Johnny Depp to get himself a private island just like his one in Tahiti.
In the summer of 1995, he started shooting a movie called "Divine
Rapture" in the tiny Irish village of Ballycotton, County Cork. His
co-stars were Johnny Depp, Debra Winger and John Hurt. Marlon was
playing a priest in the film and he had dyed his hair red for the part.
Shooting began, but was never completed due to lack of financing.
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7,
2003-2005, pages 43-46. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.
His favorite movie was Henry V (1989) which starred and was directed by Kenneth Branagh.
Was fluent in French.
In a 1989 TV interview with Connie Chung, Brando told her that he
contributed his entire salary for A Dry White Season (1989) to an
anti-apartheid group in South Africa with the understanding that M.G.M.
would make a similar contribution. The movie was the first Brando had
made in nine years. Brando quoted his salary at $3.3 million plus 11.3%
of gross. He claimed that M.G.M. reneged on its own matching
contribution to the group and that he was uncertain how much the group
received from M.G.M. because of his percentage. Brando's anger with
M.G.M. over reneging on its charitable contribution and for cutting his
scenes (which he felt were a more forceful indictment of apartheid and
had been done to prevent South Africa's then-apartheid government from
banning the studio's films) was felt to be one of the reasons that
Brando gave his first interview in many years.
Brando is a surname of Italian origin, although Marlon's original
family name spelling seems to be disputed: Italian Brando, French
Brandeau or German Brandau. In any case, all these surnames are derived
from the old Germanic word "brand" that means "sword".
His idols are Fredric March, John Barrymore and Spencer Tracy.
While making Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) in Tahiti, Brando fell in love
with the place. So, in 1966, he purchased Tetiaroa, a small atoll
located approximately 30 miles north of Tahiti. Tetiaroa is to be the
site of a lavish new ecological hotel called The Brando. Consisting of
30 deluxe fares (villas), it will be the only hotel on Tetiaroa.
In the last three years of his life, Marlon filmed a series of classes
of him giving acting lessons to Sean Penn, Jon Voight and Nick Nolte.
Marlon intended to call the series "Lying For A Living" and to sell
DVDs of it on shopping channel QVC to raise money. The DVDs were never
released publicly following his death.
His ashes were scattered in Tahiti and Death Valley.
He died in 2004 at the age of 80, from obesity, pulmonary fibrosis,
diabetes, cardiac failure, and an enlarged liver suggesting cancer.
Finished first in MSN's "The Big 50: Cinema's Greatest Legends" poll in
March 2009 (Robert De Niro finished runner-up with Al Pacino in third
place).
Personal Quotes
The more sensitive you are, the more likely you are to be brutalised,
develop scabs and never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything
because you always feel too much.
The only thing an actor owes his public is not to bore them.
An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.
Would people applaud me if I were a good plumber?
I don't know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be
afraid that I'm going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the
ass.
I put on an act sometimes, and people think I'm insensitive. Really,
it's like a kind of armour because I'm too sensitive. If there are two
hundred people in a room and one of them doesn't like me, I've got to
get out.
If you're successful, acting is about as soft a job as anybody could
ever wish for. But if you're unsuccessful, it's worse than having a
skin disease.
[on one of his most famous characters, Stanley Kowalski from A
Streetcar Named Desire (1951)] Kowalski was always right, and never
afraid. He never wondered, he never doubted. His ego was very secure.
And he had the kind of brutal aggressiveness that I hate. I'm afraid of
it. I detest the character.
I don't want to spread the peanut butter of my personality on the mouldy bread of the commercial press.
The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel's mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid.
With women, I've got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end.
I slip the loop around their necks so they can't get away or come too
close. Like catching snakes.
If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.
[on Frank Sinatra] He's the kind of guy that when he dies, he's going up to heaven and give God a bad time for making him bald.
[on his unforgettable role in The Godfather (1972)] I went home and did
some rehearsing to satisfy my curiosity about whether I could play an
Italian. I put on some makeup, stuffed Kleenex in my cheeks and worked
out the characterization first in front of a mirror, then on a
television monitor. After working on it, I decided I could create a
characterization that would support the story. The people at Paramount
saw the footage and liked it, and that's how I became the Godfather."
[when asked how he spent his time away from the camera] People ask that
a lot. They say, "What did you do while you took time out?", as if the
rest of my life is taking time out. But the fact is, making movies is
time out for me because the rest, the nearly complete whole, is what's
real for me. I'm not an actor and haven't been for years. I'm a human
being - hopefully a concerned and somewhat intelligent one - who
occasionally acts.
Regret is useless in life. It's in the past. All we have is now.
Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting is a sign of maturity.
[on the impact of The Godfather (1972)] I'd gotten to know quite a few
mafiosi, and all of them told me they loved the picture because I had
played the Godfather with dignity. Even today I can't pay a check in
Little Italy.
Acting is an empty and useless profession.
[on his characterization of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954)]
[The role] was actor-proof, a scene that demonstrated how audiences
often do much of the acting themselves in an effectively told story.
[on directing] I did it once. It was an ass-breaker. You work yourself
to death. You're the first one up in the morning . . . I mean, we shot
that thing [One-Eyed Jacks (1961)] on the run, you know. You make up
the dialog the scene before, improvising, and your brain is going crazy.
[on the Academy Awards, to Connie Chung after his Best Supporting Actor
nomination for A Dry White Season (1989)] That's a part of the sickness
in America, that you have to think in terms of who wins, who loses,
who's good, who's bad, who's best, who's worst . . . I don't like to
think that way. Everybody has their own value in different ways, and I
don't like to think who's the best at this. I mean, what's the point of
it?
[on the Academy Awards, Connie Chung TV interview, 1990] What do I
care? I've made all the money I need to make. I won a couple of Academy
Awards if I ever cared about that. I've been nominated I don't know how
many times and I'm in a position of respect and standing in my craft as
an actor in this country. So what the hell, I don't need to gild the
lily.
[after accepting the Best Actor Oscar for On the Waterfront (1954) at
the 27th Academy Awards ceremony] I can't remember what I was going to
say for the life of me. I don't think ever in my life that so many
people were so directly responsible for my being so very, very happy.
If the vacuum formed by Dr. [Martin Luther King's] death isn't filled
with concern and understanding and a measure of love, then I think we
all are really going to be lost here in this country.
[on Malcolm X] He was a dynamic person, a very special human being who
might have caused a revolution. He had to be done away with. The
American government couldn't let him live. If 23 million blacks found a
charismatic leader like he was, they would have followed him. The
powers that be couldn't accept that.
It is a simple fact that all of us use the techniques of acting to
achieve whatever ends we seek.... Acting serves as the quintessential
social lubricant and a device for protecting our interests and gaining
advantage in every aspect of life.
It seems to me hilarious that our government put the face of Elvis
Presley on a postage stamp after he died from an overdose of drugs. His
fans don't mention that because they don't want to give up their myths.
They ignore the fact that he was a drug addict and claim he invented
rock 'n' roll when in fact he took it from black culture; they had been
singing that way for years before he came along, copied them and became
a star.
I'm one of those people who believes that if I'm very good in this life I'll go to France when I die.
Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough,
insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can't help it,
but, it is troubling.
A movie that I was in, called On the Waterfront (1954): there was a
scene in a taxicab, where I turn to my brother, who's come to turn me
over to the gangsters, and I lament to him that he never looked after
me, he never gave me a chance, that I could have been a contender, I
coulda been somebody, instead of a bum ... "You should of looked out
after me, Charley." It was very moving. And people often spoke about
that, "Oh, my God, what a wonderful scene, Marlon, blah blah blah blah
blah." It wasn't wonderful at all. The situation was wonderful.
Everybody feels like he could have been a contender, he could have been
somebody, everybody feels as though he's partly bum, some part of him.
He is not fulfilled and he could have done better, he could have been
better. Everybody feels a sense of loss about something. So that was
what touched people. It wasn't the scene itself. There are other scenes
where you'll find actors being expert, but since the audience can't
clearly identify with them, they just pass unnoticed. Wonderful scenes
never get mentioned, only those scenes that affect people.
Most people want those fantasies of those who are worthy of our hate -
we get rid of a lot of anger that way; and of those who are worthy of
our idolatry. Whether it's Farrah Fawcett or somebody else, it doesn't
make a difference. They're easily replaceable units, pick 'em out like
a card file. Johnnie Ray enjoyed that kind of hysterical popularity,
celebration, and then suddenly he wasn't there anymore. The Beatles are
now nobody in particular. Once they set screaming crowds running after
them, they ran in fear of their lives, they had special tunnels for
them. They can walk almost anyplace now. Because the fantasy is gone.
Elvis Presley - bloated, over the hill, adolescent entertainer,
suddenly drawing people into Las Vegas - had nothing to do with
excellence, just myth. It's convenient for people to believe that
something is wonderful, therefore they're wonderful.
If Wally [Wally Cox] had been a woman, I would have married him and we would have lived happily ever after.
America has been good to me, but that wasn't a gift.
I have eyes like those of a dead pig.
The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.
Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite.
I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money.
This is a false world. It's been a struggle to try to preserve my
sanity and sense of reality taken away by success. I have to fight hard
to preserve that sense of reality so as to bring up my children.
I always enjoyed watching John Wayne, but it never occurred to me until
I spoke with Indians how corrosive and damaging and destructive his
movies were - most Hollywood movies were.
[on John Wayne's 1971 interview with Playboy magazine] That doesn't
need a reply, it's self-evident. You can't even get mad at it; it's so
insane that there's just nothing to say about it. He would be,
according to his point of view, someone not disposed to returning any
of the colonial possessions in Africa or Asia to their rightful owners.
He would be sharing a perspective with B.J. Vorster if he were in South
Africa. He would be on the side of Ian Smith. He would have shot down
Gandhi [Mahatma Gandhi], called him a rabble rouser. The only freedom
fighters he would recognize would be those who were fighting
Communists; if they were fighting to get out from under colonial rule,
he'd call them terrorists. The Indians today he'd call agitators,
terrorists, who knows? If John Wayne ran for President, he would get a
great following . . . I think he's been enormously instrumental in
perpetuating this view of the Indian as a savage, ferocious,
destructive force. He's made us believe things about the Indian that
were never true and perpetuated the myth about how wonderful the
frontiersmen were and how decent and honorable we all were.
Everybody ought not to turn his back on the phenomenon of hatred in
whatever form it takes. We have to find out what the anatomy of hatred
is before we can understand it. We have to make some attempt to put it
into some understandable form. Any kind of group hatred is extremely
dangerous and much more volatile than individual hatred. Heinous crimes
are committed by groups and it's all done, of course, in the name of
right, justice. It's John Wayne. It's the way he thinks. All the crimes
committed against Indians are not considered crimes by John Wayne.
I don't see anybody as evil. When you start seeing people as evil,
you're in trouble. The thing that's going to save us is understanding.
The inspection of the mind of Eichmann [Adolf Eichmann] or Himmler
[Heinrich Himmler] . . . Just to dispense with them as evil is not
enough, because it doesn't bring you understanding. You have to see
them for what they are. You have to examine John Wayne. He's not a bad
person. Who among us is going to say he's a bad man? He feels justified
for what he does. The damage that he does he doesn't consider damage,
he thinks it's an honest presentation of the facts.
Three or four times, I've pulled a gun on somebody. I had a problem
after Charles Manson, deciding to get a gun. But I didn't want somebody
coming in my house and committing mayhem. The Hillside Strangler
victims - one of the girls was found in back of my Los Angeles house.
My next-door neighbor was murdered, strangled in the bathroom.
Mulholland Drive is full of crazy people. We have nuts coming up and
down all the time.
[1976] Homosexuality is so much in fashion it no longer makes news.
Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and
I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think
about me. But if there is someone who is convinced that Jack Nicholson
and I are lovers, may they continue to do so. I find it amusing.
I know I'm not an easy person to get along with, I'm no walk in the park.
[on Burt Reynolds] I disagree with the thought process of people like
him, who is a totally narcissistic person who epitomizes everything
wrong with being a celebrity in Hollywood.
[pn Cheyenne Autumn (1964)] That was worse than any other film, because
it didn't tell the truth. Superduper patriots like John Ford could
never say that the American government was at fault. He made the evil
cavalry captain a foreigner. John Ford had him speak with a thick
accent, you didn't know what he was, but you knew he didn't represent
Mom's apple pie.
You're not going to call The Rolling Stones artists. I heard somebody
compare them - or The Beatles - to Bach [Johann Sebastian Bach]. It was
claimed they had created something as memorable and as important as
Bach, Haydn [Joseph Haydn], Mozart [Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart] and
Schubert [Franz Schubert]. I hate rock 'n' roll. It's ugly. I liked it
when the blacks had it in 1927.
Never confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent.
Humphrey Bogart played himself in every movie. Clark Gable always played Clark Gable.
Regrets belong to the past.
[on Hollywood] A cultural boneyard.
[on Dustin Hoffman] I believe that he has talent. He ought to get away
from this rather nervous character that he's played since Midnight
Cowboy (1969). Then we'd really be able to see that he's a complete
actor.
The good directors that I've worked with will say I'm a good guy. The other fellows will say I'm a bad guy.
[on Marilyn Monroe] Marilyn was a sensitive, misunderstood person, much
more perceptive than was generally assumed. She had been beaten down,
but had a strong emotional intelligence -- a keen intuition for the
feelings of others, the most refined type of intelligence. We had an
affair and saw each other intermittently until she died in 1962. It's
been speculated that she had a secret rendezvous with [Robert F.
Kennedy] that week and was distraught because he wanted to end an
affair between them. But she didn't seem depressed to me, and I don't
think that if she was sleeping with him at the time she would have
invited me over for dinner. I'm sure she didn't commit suicide. I have
always believed that she was murdered.
At Paramount, I sat at lunch with John Wayne. I couldn't even talk.
Do you remember when Marilyn Monroe died? Everybody stopped work, and
you could see all that day the same expressions on their faces, the
same thought: "How can a girl with success, fame, youth, money, beauty
. . . how could she kill herself?" Nobody could understand it because
those are the things that everybody wants, and they can't believe that
life wasn't important to Marilyn Monroe, or that her life was elsewhere.
Most New York and Beverly Hills psychoanalysts are a little crazy
themselves, as well as highly motivated to separate patients from their
money while making their emotional problems worse.
[on Lee Strasberg] An ambitious, selfish man who exploited the people
who attended the Actors Studio, and he tried to project himself as an
acting oracle and guru. Some people worshiped him, but I never knew why.
I bumped into Marilyn Monroe at a party. While other people drank and
danced, she sat by herself in a corner almost unnoticed, playing the
piano.
I come from a long line of Irish drunks.
If given the choice between Kenneth Branagh's production of Henry V
(1989) or Arnold Schwarzenegger's The Terminator (1984), there's hardly
a question of where most television dials would be turned. If the
expenditure of money for entertainment in America is any indication of
taste, clearly the majority of us are addicted to trash.
When I saw The Godfather (1972) the first time, it made me sick; all I
could see were my mistakes and I hated it. But years later, when I saw
it on television from a different perspective, I decided it was a
pretty good film.
[on Al Pacino] I didn't say much to Pacino when we were making The
Godfather (1972), but I not only consider him one of the best actors in
America, but in the world. I never meant anything more in my life.
I had a great deal of respect for Don Corleone; I saw him as a man of
substance, tradition, dignity, refinement, a man of unerring instinct
who just happened to live in a violent world and who had to protect
himself and his family in this environment. I saw him as a decent
person regardless of what he had to do, as a man who believed in family
values and was shaped by events just like the rest of us.
On The Godfather (1972) I had signs and cue cards everywhere -- on my
shirt sleeves, on a watermelon and glued to the scenery. Not memorizing
lines increased the illusion of reality and spontaneity.
News is business. And, uh, people sell news, and unfortunately people
in my position are in the public eye, are sellable commodities, but
they're not any different than Kleenex or Dial Soap or anything else.
And uh, so if we find something out that's about your sex life, or
something you do with your fingernails after you cut them off, if you
smoke the grime from your navel, then ... then ... that's big news.
That's important.... But anyway, it doesn't matter. Because, finally,
you know ... I've found that people really don't believe all the
nonsense they read. And they look at you when they meet you, and wonder
if it's true, but they finally make a decision based on what their
experience with you personally is.
A lot of the old movie stars couldn't act their way out of a box of wet
tissue paper, but they were successful because they had distinctive
personalities. They were predictable brands of breakfast cereal: on
Wednesdays we had Quaker Oats and Gary Cooper; on Fridays we had
Wheaties and Clark Gable. They were off-the-shelf products you expected
always to be the same, actors and actresses with likable personalities
who played themselves more or less the same role the same way every
time out.
Everyone on a movie deserves an award - not just one person.
I know it can be hard for a troubled kid like James Dean to have to
live up to sudden fame and the ballyhoo Hollywood created around him. I
saw it happen to Marilyn Monroe and I also knew it from my own
experience. In trying to copy me, I think Jimmy was only attempting to
deal with these insecurities, but I told him it was a mistake.
Acting is an illusion, a form of histrionic slight of hand, and in
order to carry it off, an actor must have intense concentration. Before
I go into a scene, I study it, almost psychoanalyze it. Then I discuss
it with the director and then rehearse it. When actual shooting
commences, I put in earplugs to screen out the extraneous noises that
inevitably prick at one's concentration.
With so much prejudice, racial discrimination, injustice, hatred,
poverty, starvation and suffering in the world, making movies seemed
increasingly silly and irrelevant.
Food has always been my friend. When I wanted to feel better or had a crisis in my life, I opened the icebox.
I hated authority and did everything I could to defeat it by resisting
it, subverting it, tricking it and outmaneuvering it. I would do
anything to avoid being treated like a cipher.
If I hadn't been an actor, I've often thought I'd have become a con man and wound up in jail.
An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.
I'm just another son-of-a-bitch sitting in a motor home on a film set and they come looking for Zeus.
[on his regret at not appearing in the movie version of Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof (1958)] I know more about being a homosexual than Paul Newman.
It's very clear to me that Tennessee Williams modeled Alexandra Del
Lago after Tallulah Bankhead. I surely know how to appear opposite a
Tallulah character better than Newman.
He never fooled me. Paul Newman had just as many on-location affairs as
the rest of us, and he was just as bisexual as I was. But, where I was
always getting caught with my pants down, he managed to do it in the
dark.
[on working with David Niven on Bedtime Story (1964)] Working with
David was the only time I ever looked forward to filming. I just
couldn't wait to wake up each morning and go to work so he could make
me laugh.
