Academy Award Winners

"Something rare these days—a wit."

"The only thing worth remembering about it, I guess, is that the part of the whimpering butler that I played in it gave me the first real mannerism that definitely became a part of my later character when I was teamed with Hardy. In the film, I was a very timid chap, running around and reacting with horror to everything that went on around me. To emphasize this, I cried at one point, screwed my face up—and have used it ever since. Funny thing about that cry, though; it's the only mannerism I ever used in the films that I didn't like. I remember years later when we would be improvising something on the set and we came to a pause where we couldn't think of anything to do—or had a dull moment—Roach would always insist that I use the cry. It always got a laugh, and it sure became a part of my standard equipment, but somehow I never had any affection for it."

"We never tried to use funny clothing. Of course, there were times when we would wear odd garments for a special humorous effect, but as far as our two characters were concerned, we never tried to get very far from what was real. We always wore a stand-up collar but there wasn't anything unreal about them, especially in the twenties and early thirties. Stand-up collars were formal and slightly different, but never too obviously so. They gave us, together with our derbies, a something we felt these characters needed—a kind of phony dignity. There's nothing funnier than a guy being dignified and dumb. [...] The derby hat to me has always seemed part of a comic's make-up for as far back as I can remember. I'm sure that's why Charlie wore one. Most of the comics we saw as boys wore them, so I guess you'd say that's one item that's strictly in the public domain."

"He keeps imitating himself, but he has much talent and I think in time he will do first rate comedy. I hope so. But he he's going to have to learn artistic discipline."

"So terribly funny. He can still make me laugh like crazy after all these years."

"If anyone at my funeral has a long face, I'll never speak to him again"

"I suppose we had very little of what you'd call family life. We were very seldom all together. I was almost always either in boarding school or living with my grandparents in were I was born, but still, strange as it may seem, we were always a close family."

"I remember one time Charlie [Chaplin] and I were walking over to the theater all dressed up, hanky up the sleeve, spats, double-breasted coat, carrying canes—and on the way there we became aware of Nature's urgent call. Now, public conveniences are a regular part of English life, but they certainly aren't in America. We searched high and low and couldn't find accommodation. Finally, in desperation, we asked a cop where the nearest public convenience was. "The nearest what?" the cop yelled. We asked again, very politely. He finally got our drift and said very loudly, "Aw, hell, you'll have to go to a saloon, mister!" Mind you, we were now in a pretty anxious state. We got to a saloon and started down the aisle, as it were, when we realized that we hadn't purchased anything to warrant our use of the facilities. These polite Englishmen. So, tortured as we were, we marched up to the bar very bravely, ordered a beer and sipped it for a few seconds before we flew away."

"We had different hobbies. He likes horses and golf. You know my hobby—and I married them all."

"I wish they’d re-release '... I guess maybe I’d like to see it again because it has one beautifully funny sequence that I’ve never seen in movies, either before or since. We had an army of knights in a chase sequence. There were over three hundred of them working with basket horses… the circus-clown type horses, with the men’s legs extending beneath the little papier-mâché horses built around them. It was hilarious, like some of those circus routines. There were a lot of routines we did in those days that have been forgotten today. Comics today rely too much on the line gag and not the visual gag. I think that Hollywood comics these days are talking too much and not doing enough."

"If they ever do a film of my life—and I hope they won't—I'd like Dick to play me. He's one of the very, very few comedians around who knows how to use his body for real.comedy."

"It has to be visual stuff. Too many radio writers are writing radio gags for television, which is a visual medium."

"It's a strange thing, but we really only got to know each other in the last years of his life. When we were making pictures together, we never saw each other off the set. As soon as the picture was finished, he'd go his way and I'd go mine. We both had our own circle of friends and our own interests. [...] After we were out of pictures, we did a lot of touring in Europe together and that's when we got to know each other intimately. You couldn't help it—you had to be together much of the time at theatres, in hotels, at press parties and on trains."

"[He can't stand to watch their old comedies on TV because] because they're so cut up. [...] I wish I could have edited them. They seem too slow nowadays. That was because we had to leave time between the gags for the audience to laugh. You don't need that spread in TV."

"I don't see many people anymore. It's a long way out here to . And I can't go any place. I have and still haven't completely recovered from the stroke I had in 1955, so all I can do is stay in the apartment here and watch the ocean and television. About the only visitor I have, except for my family, is Jerry Lewis. He's been after me to work as a comedy consultant on his movies. Once he came out here and stayed seven hours. We had a lot of laughs. But, as for working again, I can't. I'm all washed up in this business."

"Someone I really respect and have been working with recently said to me, “You have to know that you have power. Know that you don’t have to fight so hard that you’re just on survival mode all the time. People around you are there to help you and they will be there when you fail. It’s okay to ask for help.”"

"I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I don’t think I can pinpoint why my upbringing or experiences have made me that way, but I have always been an outsider myself; it doesn’t matter where I went. I’m attracted to people who are on the periphery of society. I’ve been like this since high school. I liked mangas growing up and the ones I was drawn to were not about mainstream characters."

"I love movies that don’t necessarily tell me how I should feel or how I should think but give me this canvas that I can go away and have a conversation with myself and people around me."

"Sometimes life drives you to a place… the road allows you to rediscover yourself."

"It goes back to when I was a teenager in China, being in a place where there are lies everywhere. You felt like you were never going to be able to get out. A lot of info I received when I was younger was not true, and I became very rebellious toward my family and my background. I went to England suddenly and relearned my history. Studying political science in a liberal arts college was a way for me to figure out what is real. Arm yourself with information, and then challenge that too."

"I have gone through ups and downs in my relatively short career. And one thing I’ve learned is a bit of a cliché, but everything does happen for a reason."

"I don’t make films so that people can agree with me more. I make them to portray a character, a people or a way of life that people don’t know but that anyone can get to know. Then they can experience those things through their own conditioning and walk away with their own opinions and we can have a conversation about it. That’s the power of cinema. But if you stop me on the street to talk about politics, I’ll argue with you all day."

"The one thing that I learned really early on is that you’ve got to surround yourself with the right people. Because you can’t change how people think — you can’t control how they’re going to think, how they’re going to behave. But what you can do is make sure the people that are around you not only protect you but want to be with you because of who you are as an individual. I’ve been lucky in my whole career so far. Every single film we’ve made, I’m surrounded by people like that."

"But just by pointing the camera at something, you’re already making a statement of some kind. It’s inevitable, because you’re adding a perspective to it. I find that sometimes when I go into a community that’s not my own, or a community that has a lot of issues attached to it, I have to resist wanting to say something about how I think they could be better, or how I think the government has wronged them. A lot of times, they tell me what they think I want to hear because they’ve been interviewed many times by journalists. And usually, there’s something that these people who are interviewing them want them to say, because people go in with an agenda. I hear them saying things to me almost like they’re programmed to do it. You have to wait for that to be finished, and then you can ask, “What football team do you support?” or, “Tell me about your high school sweetheart.”"

"Making films is about communicating, and I am terrified that I will end up making films for people who already agree with me, which just keeps enforcing our own ideas. I’d rather have one person who disagrees with my politics watch my film, and then somehow see themselves in it without putting up a shield, than a whole room of people who already agree with me give me a standing ovation."

"Instead of celebrating Chloé Zhao's wins at the Oscar and making the Chinese public feeling proud, Beijing is busy censoring her -- all for a criticism she made in 2013. For as long as I've been writing about Chinese censorship and propaganda, I still can't wrap my mind around it."

"Films directed by Chloé Zhao"

"People at birth, are inherently good. Their natures are similar, it’s the sensitive characters in their names that make them different. Congratulations to director Chloé Zhao!"

"You could watch her script adapt to the personalities and stories that came from those conversations. You could see her listening to these individuals telling their stories, and then collaborating with them to fold their own narratives into the script. Chloé really allows people to choose how they want to represent themselves. The safety of fiction filmmaking, in my opinion, actually pulls out a level of honesty and authenticity that I think would be impossible if this was a documentary purporting to truth."

"Sometimes people feel like they are not important enough to be in a movie. Once they meet Chloé, they open up. She makes people feel special. Chloé truly wants to hear their story and she wants them to tell it."

"This year, a female ethnic Chinese director got the awards, but even keywords related to her cannot be seen on social media. This is extremely lame."

"But the truth is, you can never really be happy, because happiness is not an ultimate thing. Happiness is when your expectations are met with reality. If your expectation is constantly fed by the capitalist economy for its own survival, that you always need more, then you can never be as satisfied as the medieval farmer was satisfied with his piece of bread."

"I've been thinking a lot lately of how I keep going when things get hard. I think it goes back to something I learned when I was a kid. When I was growing up in China, my Dad and I used to play this game. We would memorise classic Chinese poems and texts, and we would recite them together and try to finish each other's sentences."

"There's one that I remember so dearly, it's called the Three Character Classics. The first phrase goes... 'People at birth are inherently good.' Those six letters had such a great impact on me when I was a kid, and I still truly believe them today."

"I’m not the kind of filmmaker who just makes films. I have to be in love with my subject matter and want to learn more about it. Someone once said to me that passion doesn’t sustain, but curiosity does. I have to be excited by little things I discover along the way."

"Even though sometimes it might seem like the opposite is true, I have always found goodness in the people I met, everywhere I went in the world. So this is for anyone who had the faith, and the courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves, and to hold on to the goodness in each other, no matter how difficult is to do that. And this is for you. You inspire me to keep going."

"It's difficult for me to meet women because my crowd is much older. I know that for some of the young women I do meet, a relationship with me can be envisioned as a benefit to their career."

"If your work isn't exciting, doesn't stir the emotions, where's the challenge? Where's the progress if you always play it safe?"

"I'm a risk-taker. Most of my career has not been a joyful experience, but it has been challenging. I like the dangers."

"I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk​, Chicago is work."

"The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child."

"Cancer didn't bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet."

"Do you know what absolute happiness is? For me, it is to wake up my kids in the morning - these little pieces of innocence - to wake them and find they're so happy to see me! It is unequivocal love, no question about it."

"I read the script, and I think, 'That's a good movie, and that's a really good movie, moves me, makes me laugh, this and that.' I don't worry about the part. Then I'm looking who's around me? Who's the director? Who's the cast? And I would much rather have a little part in a good movie than a big part in a crappy movie."

"This year, 2020, is the worst year of my life. I was born in 1944, so I took no part in the Second World War. But this is one of the worst things I can imagine. The pandemic affects everyone, regardless of their financial status. The only hope I have is that it brings us all a little closer. But it is a tragedy, and it indicates which countries have strong governments and those which do not. I hope that it will prepare us for the next time."

"A work ethic. Courtesy to your fellow human beings. And kindness. Which are traits you have to work at and rehearse. Particularly compassion — I feel a certain responsibility to conduct myself as somebody who has been blessed and fortunate simply because I was born a white male. And also to teach them to be good citizens of the planet. I'm conscious of us all being in this together."

"People have this idea that I'm part of show business royalty. I cherish the relationship I had with my father, and I'd love to fulfill the fantasy. But when I was young, he was a working actor and hadn't quite made it yet."

"You rack your brain. You take it personally in the beginning, you start blaming yourself. My career came before my family. My marriage was not great, and so you do hide yourself in your work. I should have focused more on my family. But that's hard to say when you're in the midst of your career, when you are in your own mind stepping out of your father's shadow, trying to create a life of your own."

"I said it as Gordon Gekko, but I don’t believe that greed is good. The size of fortunes in finance have increased. It’s an accumulation of our political system over the past 30 years; the amount of money that’s invested in certain politicians, so the politician is not responsible to his constituency, but to the people who financially supported him. What you’re seeing now is the result of years of choosing the person who has the best financial connections. I’m sure Gordon Gekko would have been friends with Donald Trump. I’ve known Donald fairly well over the years, in New York. They would probably play golf together!"

"Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films."