Actors From England

"This morning on Dartford station a guy I knew at primary school came up to me. He's got every record Chuck Berry made. He is called Mick Jagger."

"I don't encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!"

"I was number one on the Who's Likely To Die list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list."

"I thought rock and roll was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expression of rebellion. It used to be one channel you could take without ever havin' to kiss arse, you know?"

"I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory."

"There are certain guys that are band players and there's certain guys that ain't. If there's anybody lazier than me, it's Eric (Clapton)."

"I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment...it's not what the Stones is about, is it? I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, It's a fucking paltry honour."

"What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar."

"I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again."

"Yes, star-crossed in pleasure, the stream flows on by Yes, as we're sated in leisure, we watch it fly, yes And time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me... Time can tear down a building or destroy a woman's face Hours are like diamonds, don't let them waste Time waits for no one, no favors has he"

"I see a red door and I want it painted black No colors anymore, I want them to turn black I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes I have to turn my head until my darkness goes I see a line of cars and they're all painted black With flowers and my love, both never to come back I see people turn their heads and quickly look away Like a new born baby, it just happens every day I look inside myself and see my heart is black I see my red door, I must have it painted black Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts It's not easy facing up, when your whole world is black"

"If you've got everybody collaborating on a mass scale; you can't be stopped. You can do anything, man. You can move mountains. If all the kids in this estate were a piecing, can you imagine what a beautiful place it would be?"

"Hynkel Party take power. Meanwhile the Jewish soldier, ex-fighter and veteran of the World War, suffered a lost of memory and remained and inmate of the soldiers' hospital for many years. He was ignorant of the profound change that had come over Tomainia. Hynkel, the dictator, ruled the nation with an iron fist. Under the new emblem of the double cross, liberty was banished, free speech was suppressed and only the voice of Hynkel was heard."

"This is a story of a period between two World Wars — an interim in which insanity cut loose. Liberty took a nose dive, and humanity was kicked around somewhat."

"Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot."

"Look up to the sky You'll never find rainbows If you’re looking down."

"I am not a political man and I have no political convictions. I am an individual and a believer in liberty. That is all the politics I have. On the other hand I am not a super-patriot. Super-patriotism leads to Hitlerism — and we've had our lesson there. I don't want to create a revolution — I just want to create a few more films."

"I feel I am privileged to express a hope. The hope is this: that we shall have peace throughout the world: that we shall abolish wars, and settle all international differences at the conference table: that we shall abolish all atom and hydrogen bombs, before they abolish us first."

"Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. … The trouble is you won't fight. You've given up. But there's something just as inevitable as death. And that's life. Think of the power of the universe — turning the Earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you — if you'll only have the courage and the will to use it."

"I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of an ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, of all of which I am the sum total."

"I believe that faith is a precursor of all our ideas. Without faith, there never could have evolved hypothesis, theory, science or mathematics. I believe that faith is an extension of the mind. It is the key that negates the impossible. To deny faith is to refute oneself and the spirit that generates all our creative forces. My faith is in the unknown, in all that we do not understand by reason; I believe that what is beyond our comprehension is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good."

"I am not religious in the dogmatic sense … I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything."

"Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities — a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one."

"All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl."

"I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born."

"I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician."

"I am for people. I can't help it."

"I am at peace with God; my conflict is with man."

"Wars, conflict, it's all business. "One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero". Numbers sanctify."

"[Hynkel addressing the crowds, referring to his colleagues: clearly modelled upon Göring and Goebbels] Hynkel: Herring shouldn smelten fine from Garbitsch, und Garbitsch shouldn smelten fine from Herring. Herring und Garbitsch... [He clasps his hands together] Translator: His excellency has just referred to the struggles of his early days shared by his two loyal comrades."

"A day without laughter is a day wasted."

"The inmates have taken over the asylum!"

"By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none."

"I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible — Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world, there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now, my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder! Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural! Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke, it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" — not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power — the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world — a decent world, that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future, and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise — they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite! [Cheers] Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah — the clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness, into the light. We are coming into a new world — a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah — the soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly! He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah — look up!"

"Hannah: Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone."

"Schultz: You must speak. Jewish barber: I can't. Schultz: It's our only hope."

"Chaplin had no previous film acting experience when he came to California. By the end of 1915 he was the most famous human being in the entire world. But at the time he first arrived as a greenhorn at the gates of Keystone to try his luck at making a buck in those “galloping tintypes” of 1913, he already had under his belt close to twenty years stage experience in British music hall."

"The greatest artist produced by the screen was an English cockney, Charlie Chaplin, who never gave up British nationality and who retained the innocent utopian socialism of his early years. He was England's gift to the world in this age, likely to be remembered when her writers, statesmen, and scientists are forgotten, as timeless as Shakespeare and as great."

"As far as the making of films goes, when the functions are identified so that there is again-as in the modest documentaries, or in Chaplin's procedure-a writer-director-editor, some unity of"

"exclusively verbal humor have been conveyed by Harpo Marx, who with Charles Chaplin, Jimmy Savo, and Danny Kaye, ranks as a master artist of pantomime."

"Charlie Chaplin is the greatest director of the screen. He's a pioneer. How he knows women!—oh, how he knows women! I do not cry easily when seeing a picture, but after seeing Charlie's A Woman of Paris I was all choked up—I wanted to go out in the garden and have it out by myself."

"We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin — a little fellow trying to do the best he could."

"With A King in New York Charles Chaplin was the first film-maker to dare to expose, through satire and ridicule, the paranoia and political intolerance which overtook the United States in the Cold War years of the 1940s and 50s."

"With the exception of Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, which appeared in 1940, "no explicit presentation of the Jewish catastrophe" was made until 1959, with the production of the movie version of The Diary of Anne Frank."

"As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY"."

"My dad was great. He was very droll, very dry. The first time that he came to London when I was in the theatre and my name was in lights for the very first time and we had the same name, and he passed the theatre with me on the way, he was going to see a matinee and me, and my mother and he passed the theatre, and I said, 'Look,' and he looked up at my name in lights, and stood there for five minutes, and I'm going, 'I want to have lunch and get back for the matinee,' and I'm with my mother, and he still stood there and so, I went back to get him and he just said, 'I never thought that I'd see my name in lights.'"

"It's true that old actors don't die, their parts get smaller. You're less likely to get the part, many parts, if you're playing people your age as opposed to people who are younger. There are fewer parts around."

"I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth."

"It seems to me a long way to go just to sit in a non-drinking, non-smoking environment on the offchance your name is called. … It's as if you are entered into a race you don't particularly want to run in. All the hoops you have to jump through on these occasions: it's not my favourite occupation. Walking around in the spotlight having to be me is not something I'm particularly comfortable with or desire. I'd sooner pretend to be someone else."

"To be a character who feels a deep emotion, one must go into the memory's vault and mix in a sad memory from one's own life."