The Quotebook
On acting.
Craft, instinct, and the charge that he only ever played himself.
He was accused of playing himself for the better part of forty years, and he answered the charge more thoughtfully than his answerers expected. On the discipline of appearing effortless, he was consistent to the end.
The lines.
37 quotationsVerified
“I still want to go on making pictures until I’m dead . . . or longer.”
Verified
“I received only a sketchy education by most scholastic standards, lacked confidence and the courage to enjoy life, but on the screen seem to have successfully epitomized an informed, capable and happy man. A series of contradictions too evident to be coincidental.”
Cary Grant · 1963 · memoir · Ladies' Home Journal
On the gap between the private man and the screen persona.
Ladies' Home Journal, autobiographical series, 1963.
Attributed
“I’ve had a lot of fine offers, but I’m cautious. I’d rather make one good picture a year than three indifferent ones.”
Verified
“I learned everything from Mae West - well not quite everything, but almost everything. She knew so much. Her instinct was so true, her timing was perfect, her grasp of situations so right.”
Verified
“It took time to be accepted; it almost took twenty years until I got to be like a well-advertised brand of tea. Housewives bought that kind rather than take a chance on a brand they are not familiar with.”
Attributed
“Everybody thinks I’m relaxed. I’m not relaxed at all. It’s a very hard-working profession, this acting business, when you do it as I do it.”
Cary Grant · 1971 · press · Look
On the labour behind the effortless manner.
C. Mangel, 'The New Women in the Life of Cary Grant,' Look, 23 February 1971.
Verified
“I suppose you might call me the sophisticated type. I like to act with dialogue. Not with grunts.”
Verified
“Stop underplaying, I can’t hear you!”
Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster · 1944 · film · Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Mortimer, a drama critic, cannot stop reviewing even in a crisis.
Spoken as Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).
Verified
“On The Awful Truth we just clicked. She’d been a weepie star and comedy was strange to her... She was the sweetest smelling of my leading ladies and such a lady.”
Verified
“The film I most cared about was a flop. None But the Lonely Heart was the only time I played a character very near myself, a man unsure of himself, a drifter, a rake.”
Attributed
“I think most of us become actors because we want affection, love and applause.”
Disputed
“Acting is a matter of hiding what you have to show and showing what you have to hide.”
Attributed
“Cary Grant is the only actor I ever loved in my whole life.”
Alfred Hitchcock · interview
Hitchcock directed Grant four times, in Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest.
Widely repeated as a Hitchcock remark; the original interview and date have not been established.
Attributed
“I loved working with Cary — every minute of it. Between takes he was so amusing with his cockney stories. I was his best audience. I laughed and laughed and laughed. The more I laughed, the more he went on.”
Irene Dunne · interview
Dunne made three pictures with Grant: The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife and Penny Serenade.
Attributed recollection of working with Grant; the original interview and date have not been established.
Verified
“I wonder if audiences realize what is the hardest thing in the world - it is for every actor to be what you call ‘natural.’ Whenever I hear people say that Crosby or Gary Cooper just play themselves in pictures, I have to laugh. There is no such thing.”
Cary Grant · 1961 · essay · Films and Filming
Rebutting the idea that some actors merely play themselves.
'What it Means to be a Star,' Films and Filming, July 1961.
Verified
“I often think my life has been a failure. But whenever I drop into a theater and hear women laugh at one of my films, I think, well, if I brightened their day before they went home and did the dishes, maybe my life wasn’t wasted, after all.”
Verified
“High comedy and polished words, that’s the hardest to write and to act but it’s the best. And it lasts the longest, too.”
Verified
“I do it because I enjoy it. That’s reason enough, isn’t it?”
Cary Grant · 1986 · interview
At eighty-two, explaining why he was still touring with A Conversation with Cary Grant.
Philip Wuntch, 'A Few Words with Cary Grant,' syndicated newspaper interview, 1986.
Verified
“No money, no material reward is comparable to the praise, the shouts of well done and accompanying pat on the back of one’s fellowman.”
Cary Grant · 1963 · memoir · Ladies' Home Journal
Recalling schoolboy applause, and the applause that followed it for the rest of his life.
Ladies' Home Journal, autobiographical series, 1963.
Verified
“I promised myself that I’ll only play in another picture if the role is really worthwhile.”
Cary Grant · 1961 · essay · Films and Filming
On becoming selective about roles.
'What it Means to be a Star,' Films and Filming, July 1961.
Attributed
“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.”
Verified
“To play yourself, your true self, is the hardest thing in the world to do.”
Verified
“I’ve often been accused by critics of being myself on-screen. But being oneself is more difficult than you’d suppose.”
Attributed
“I don’t know how to make love on screen without making it look like a joke.”
Attributed
“The only way to make a good picture is to make it with good people.”
Attributed
“Old actors never die, they just lose their memory for lines.”
Attributed
“Hitchcock trusted the audience. That was the difference.”
Cary Grant · 1972 · interview
On working with Alfred Hitchcock across four pictures.
Attributed
“I don’t think any actor ever really knows what he is doing. He only knows what he is trying to do.”
Attributed
“That’s the way I’ve always been — I’d rather be looked at than listened to.”
Verified
“How do you know that? How do you know what’s in people’s minds? I don’t know. I just did my job.”
Verified
“I had no idea she would become a big star. If she had something different from any other actress, it wasn’t apparent at that time. She just seemed very shy and quiet.”
Verified
“I’ve worked with Bergman, I’ve worked with Hepburn, I’ve worked with some of the biggest stars, but Grace Kelly was the best actress I’ve ever worked with in my life. That woman had total relaxation, absolute ease — she was totally there.”
Verified
“If I were to go back, I’d like to do something entertaining and amusing, yet unfictional. Something informative that would appeal to both children and grown-ups. And there’s no such thing. It can’t be found.”
Cary Grant · 1981 · press · The Washington Post
Speculating in 1981 about the conditions under which he might return to work.
Gary Arnold, "The Kennedy Center Honors", The Washington Post, 6 December 1981.
Attributed
“If you want to be an actor, my advice is to learn your lines and don’t bump into the other actors.”
Verified
“Ingrid was a splendid, splendid performer, but she wasn’t as relaxed in front of the camera as Grace was. She took acting so seriously. But I adored her.”
Verified
“Ours is a collaborative medium, we all need each other. That’s how we exist.”
Verified
“The actors today are so much better than the ones in our day. I’m amazed at what Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson can do. In my day, our work was incredibly confined because we were so hurt by censorship. We weren’t allowed to show any passion.”