Christopher Plummer Quotations

Working with Julie Andrews is like getting hit over the head with a valentine.

I'm too old-fashioned to use a computer. I'm too old-fashioned to use a quill.

In Stratford you either turn into an alcoholic or you better write.

I want to paint Montreal as a rather fantastic city, which it was, because nobody knows today what it was like. And I'm one of the last survivors, or rapidly becoming one.

I couldn't believe when I first got a fan letter from Al Pacino, it was unreal.

The part of Mike Wallace drew me to the movie because I thought, what an outrageous part to play.

It is a culture voice, but it is a very American culture voice, and I am very used to English culture voice. So I had to work like hell to flatten those R's.

I would rather not know about how one gets parts in movies these days.

Here is Mike Wallace, who is visible to the public, and I have been watching him since the early '50s. Smoking up a storm and insulting his guests and being absolutely wonderfully evil and charming too.

Most of my life I have played a lot of famous people but most of them were dead so you have a poetic license.

They realized I was alive again, even though I was playing an old, dying sop.

The first time my father saw me in the flesh was on the stage, which is a bit weird. We went out to dinner, and he was charming and sweet, but I did all the talking.

I'm talking about when you're nearer the end of your life than the beginning. Now what do you think you think about then? The future? In the future I'm going to do this? Become that? What future? No. What you think is, 'How will I be regarded in the end?'

I just can't tell you what fun I've had being a member of the world's second oldest profession.

The devil is more interesting than God.

If the movie is terrible you can have fun. You can joke about it and have a ball. The movie is already sort of established as a kind of extraordinary piece of work even though it hasn't opened yet to the public. It is harder because you can't go against it and you can't be interesting. You have to go with the flow. Although one is very happy to be in it, it is sort of hard to talk about it. It is hard to talk about successful. It is much easier to talk about failure.

How you prepare for a role is entirely your business in my point of view. There is little enough mystery anymore left in the world in the part of our profession, which should be clouded in mystery because it isn't in the public. You don't want the magician to show his tricks or how he did them do you? So I do think that is a very private thing that we actors should protect ourselves from.

Not the challenges necessarily, but the way in which you get ready because your technique has improved over the years and you perhaps know how to be more economical than perhaps you used to be when you tried to work perhaps too hard.

Theater roles are written by the great masters. The greatest literature that you can possibly know are the theater roles like King Lear, Hamlet, and all of those great roles. So all you do is you dive into these unchallenged roles and see how far you can get, what kind of accolades you can get, and how good you can be in them. In movie roles, you can actually improve them by knowing a lot about your own stage technique, which helps a great deal in the cinema and how you can project inner humor even though the particular dialogue is not necessarily funny, but you can infuse it with humor.

History remembers most what you did last.

A truly great structure, one that is meant to stand the tests of time, never disregards its environment. A serious architect takes that into account. He knows that if he wants presence, he must consult with nature.

Sometimes you have to look into a mirror and look at the worst you could have been if you're ever going to know the best you were meant to be.

I've been very fortunateit's just been an amazing piece of luck. I haven't had to suffer for my art but I've suffered enough inside to hopefully be called an artist.

Unless you can surround yourself with as many beautiful things as you can afford, I don`t think life has very much meaning.

Try and stay sober. Until the curtain call. And for God's sake, have fun. Don't suffer for your art. Just have fun.

You're only two years older than me, darling. Where have you been all my life?

A lot of great people have seen people portray them and loathed them. But I did my best and I don't think there is anything to be offended at.

It was awesome to run the bar. There are a lot of cool, great people who came here.

The drama critic for The Montreal Gazette gave me a good review in a high-school production of Pride and Prejudice. It went to my head.