Roddy McDowall Quotations

I can't say I was unhappy as a child actor in films, because I wasn't,

Intellectually I'd love to play Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire Can't you just imagine me down in the streets yelling "Stella! Stella!" God, the critics would have a lot of fun with that one.

I really liked Lassie, but that horse, Flicka, was a nasty animal with a terrible disposition. All the Flickas-all six of them-were awful.

My whole life I've been trying to prove I'm not just yesterday.

I still have the actor's disease. I always think I'll never get another job.

I started to study, because I knew I had to learn a lot about myself as an actor; you can't act the same as you did as a child.

I can't say I was unhappy as a child actor in films. I had a particularly wonderful time.

They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York.

All you can do is make a piece of product, sell it on its own terms, stand behind it and hope that people will go see it. If you try to be like something else or appeal to any given group, then you can very easily end up being gratuitous and imitative. There's not much to be gained by that and I think too much time is spent going around trying to be like someone else.

Fortunately, I happened to go east at a time when live television was centered in New York.

Beware the beast man, for he is the devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

I enjoyed being in movies when I was a boy. As a child you're not acting - you believe. Ah, if an adult could only act as a child does with that insane, playing-at-toy- soldiers concentration!