The Quotebook
On identity.
Archie Leach, Cary Grant, and the distance he kept between them.
No subject in the record returns as often as this one. Grant spoke about the persona he built with a candour that is unusual in a film star of his generation — not as an anecdote, but as a problem he never entirely solved. The lines below are the ones he repeated, in his own writing and in interviews, across three decades.
The lines.
46 quotationsDisputed
“Judy, Judy, Judy.”
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.
Verified
“I refuse to discuss my private life and my friendships and my family, present, past and future.”
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.”
Attributed
“At last I am close to happiness and to being a real, actual person.”
Verified
“Because I just went GAY all of a sudden!”
Cary Grant as David Huxley · 1938 · film · Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Huxley, caught in a marabou-trimmed negligee, explains himself. The line is widely cited as one of the first uses of the word in its modern sense in an American film.
Spoken as David Huxley in Bringing Up Baby (1938).
Verified
“Let me tell you something. I am not a father figure. I am not an uncle figure, or a brother or a cousin figure. In fact, the only figure I intend being is a total stranger figure.”
Cary Grant as Walter Eckland · 1964 · film · Father Goose (1964)
Eckland resists the schoolgirls stranded on his island. Grant took the part specifically to play against his own glamour.
Spoken as Walter Eckland in Father Goose (1964).
Disputed
“Old Cary Grant fine. How you?”
Disputed
“Acting is a matter of hiding what you have to show and showing what you have to hide.”
Disputed
“I made a lot of mistakes out of loneliness. Consequently, I know a great deal about it.”
Disputed
“I was a failure as a boy and became a success as a man because I always was and always will be Archibald Alexander Leach, only I became better at hiding it than he ever could.”
Verified
“Ah, Maggie, in the world of advertising, there’s no such thing as a lie. There’s only the expedient exaggeration.”
Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill · 1959 · film · North by Northwest (1959)
Thornhill jokes with his mother about his trade, minutes before he is mistaken for a spy.
Spoken as Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest (1959).
Verified
“My name is Rochard. You’ll think I’m a bride but actually I’m a husband. There’ll be a moment or two of confusion but, if we all keep our heads, everything will be fine.”
Cary Grant as Capt. Henri Rochard · 1949 · film · I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
Rochard introduces himself to the United States Army.
Spoken as Capt. Henri Rochard in I Was a Male War Bride (1949).
Disputed
“Everybody thinks I’m relaxed. I’ve spent my whole life tense.”
Verified
“For more than half my fifty-eight years I have cautiously peered from behind the facade of a man known as Cary Grant. The protection of that facade proved both an advantage and a disadvantage. If I couldn’t clearly see out, how could anyone see in?”
Cary Grant · 1963 · memoir · Ladies' Home Journal
The opening lines of his autobiography, written in his own hand for the magazine.
Ladies' Home Journal, autobiographical series, 1963.
Verified
“I used to hide behind the façade that was Cary Grant… I didn’t know if I were Archie Leach, or Cary Grant, and I wasn’t taking any chances.”
Cary Grant · 1964 · interview · Motion Picture
On the split between the name he was born with and the one he invented.
'Love – That's All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About,' Motion Picture, June 1964.
Attributed
“Every one of my wives left me. I don’t know why, maybe they got bored, tired of me. I don’t know. Maybe I was making the mistake of thinking that each of my wives was my mother, that there would never be a replacement once she left.”
Verified
“Now you listen to me, I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent upon me, and I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.”
Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill · 1959 · film · North by Northwest (1959)
Thornhill protests his innocence to the men who have mistaken him for George Kaplan.
Spoken as Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest (1959).
Verified
“Be whatever you like, you’re my Tracy.”
Cary Grant as C. K. Dexter Haven · 1940 · film · The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Dexter Haven accepts Tracy Lord as she is, which is the point of the picture.
Spoken as C. K. Dexter Haven in The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Verified
“Danielle, do me a favor. Don’t call me a cat.”
Cary Grant as John Robie · 1955 · film · To Catch a Thief (1955)
Robie, retired from burglary, dislikes the nickname.
Spoken as John Robie in To Catch a Thief (1955).
Verified
“Well, on the contrary, the process of turning a man into a woman is enormously complicated, but I’ll do my best.”
Cary Grant as Capt. Henri Rochard · 1949 · film · I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
Rochard accepts his disguise. Grant played the whole film straight-faced, which is why it works.
Spoken as Capt. Henri Rochard in I Was a Male War Bride (1949).
Attributed
“Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”
Cary Grant · 1963 · interview
His most-quoted line about the distance between Archibald Leach and the persona he built; repeated by Grant in interviews across the 1960s and 1970s.
Grant's best-known remark, in circulation since the 1960s and quoted in Marc Eliot's Cary Grant: A Biography (2004). No dated primary interview has ever been produced for it.
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.”
Verified
“I’ve spent the greater part of my life fluctuating between Archie Leach and Cary Grant, unsure of each, suspecting each.”
Cary Grant · 1963 · memoir · Ladies' Home Journal
From his autobiographical writing on identity and the invented self.
Ladies' Home Journal, autobiographical series, 1963.
Verified
“A lack of artifice. I don’t like a lot of make-up or a lot of perfume. If someone wears a lot of make-up, it shows me that they’re not happy with their features — it shows their insecurity.”
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 consider faith properly injected into a patient as effective in maintaining life as adrenaline, and a belief in miracles has been the difference between living and dying as often as any surgeon’s scalpel.”
Dr. Noah Praetorius · 1951 · film · People Will Talk (1951)
Praetorius defends his unconventional bedside manner at a hearing into his methods.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Dr. Noah Praetorius in People Will Talk (1951).
Attributed
“I don’t care what they’re saying. I’ve developed a skin like a rhino’s.”
Verified
“I feel delighted and flattered, and I don’t think I deserve it.”
Verified
“I shall cherish it until I die, because probably no greater honor can come to any man than the respect of his colleagues.”
Attributed
“I took LSD with the hope it would make me feel better about myself. I wanted to rid myself of all my hypocrisies.”
Verified
“I’m often asked for advice or an opinion about clothes, and I always try to answer the best I can, but I’m not inclined to regard myself as an authority on the subject.”
Verified
“I’m so broke I’m in two halves.”
Ernie Mott · 1944 · film · None But the Lonely Heart (1944)
Ernie Mott, a restless drifter in London's East End, laments his poverty.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Ernie Mott in None But the Lonely Heart (1944).
Verified
“I’m sorry you think more of your diamonds than you do of your soul.”
Captain Cummings · 1933 · film · She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Cummings, posing as a temperance reformer, chides Lady Lou about her priorities.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Captain Cummings in She Done Him Wrong (1933).
Verified
“I’ve never been a joiner or a member of any particular social set, but I’ve been privileged to be a part of Hollywood’s most glorious era.”
Verified
“Little friend of all the world, nobody’s enemy but me own.”
Jimmy Monkley · 1935 · film · Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
Monkley describes his rakish self-image to Sylvia after she taunts him.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Jimmy Monkley in Sylvia Scarlett (1935).
Verified
“Never give a sucker an even break and always keep an eye on your pals.”
Joe Adams · 1943 · film · Mr. Lucky (1943)
Joe recites his hustler's credo to his partner Crunk early in the picture.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Joe Adams in Mr. Lucky (1943).
Verified
“People don’t realize how distressing that sort of thing is. I’m sure they don’t or they wouldn’t do it. I get stared at all the time, and it’s annoying.”
Verified
“Six feet, one and a half inches — and shrinking.”
Verified
“Stop saying ‘Leopold’ like that, tenderly. It sounds funny. You can’t do it with a name like Leopold.”
Leopold Dilg · 1942 · film · The Talk of the Town (1942)
Dilg jokes with Nora about his own unglamorous first name amid their growing affection.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Leopold Dilg in The Talk of the Town (1942).
Verified
“Well, it’s a form of self-expression. Some people write books. Some people write music. I make speeches on street corners.”
Leopold Dilg · 1942 · film · The Talk of the Town (1942)
Dilg defends his soapbox politicking to Nora and Lightcap.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Leopold Dilg in The Talk of the Town (1942).
Verified
“What is the law? It’s a gun pointed at somebody’s head. All depends upon which end of the gun you stand, whether the law is just or not.”
Leopold Dilg · 1942 · film · The Talk of the Town (1942)
The fugitive Dilg argues legal philosophy with the punctilious Professor Lightcap while hiding in his house.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Leopold Dilg in The Talk of the Town (1942).
Verified
“You don’t belong with a grifter like me. You just got some mud on your dress, that’s all. Give it time, let it dry. It’ll brush off.”
Joe Adams · 1943 · film · Mr. Lucky (1943)
The con man Joe Adams warns Captain Steadman away from himself as he begins to change under her influence.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Joe Adams in Mr. Lucky (1943).