Peter Lorre Quotes

I can’t stand to live in Europe. And New York isn’t much better.

I couldn’t live without acting. In fact anybody who can live without that feeling is a complete idiot.

It’s sort of sad, but the public is no longer afraid of ghosts. They laugh at them instead.

My family encouraged me to paint, but I was never allowed to go to the theater. Naturally, this made me interested in the theater.

Sydney and I made so many pictures together we were becoming Abbott and Costello, so we broke up. You know Greenstreet was a comedian before he played ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and in that picture his dialogue consisted of seven pages in a row which he memorized weeks ahead.

For the type of parts I play, I should be booed. But it’s odd, fans just adore me. I can’t explain it.

I’m not scaring anybody for no money!

For a lazy man I work awfully hard.

The audience loves me.

I’m easy to imitate. All you need are the soft-boiled egg eyes and the bedroom voice.

People call me Pepe Le Moko. I never played that role.

Actually I made only one out-and-out horror picture, ‘The Beast with Five Fingers,’ though I have done a lot of suspense and mystery films, of course.

I don’t want to be typed as a villain or a comedian. One would be as bad as the other. I had to fight that sort of thing several times in my life. And it’s painful because it consists of turning down money to do a role.

I don’t want to brag, but I can make people laugh and then be terrified.

I’ve been billed as the world’s most imitated actor.

You’d be amazed how people love me.

Being typed is not important. For a while vou are typed as one thing. You get out of that. Then you are typed as something else. You can break away from everything except comedy. It’s fatal to be typed as a comedian. You can’t get out of that.

It got so that I couldn’t play anything but a Peter Lorre character.

If I had wanted to remain one character, I could still be playing Mr. Moto.

I can’t understand why I am always being called a ‘boogie-man’ type of actor.

I signed with Columbia for two reasons. One reason I saw two of Frank Capra s pictures in Paris, and I want to work with him. Then at Columbia, in Harry Cohn, there is only one judge to please. I could not face the juries of fourteen that I have heard about at so many large studios.

For money, I can be a nice guy.

Some people think I was in movies I’ve never been in.

I have made over 70 pictures and in only 10 of them did I portray a really ‘bad man.’

I don’t like the word ‘villain’ or ‘heavy.’

Interviews are horrible. All your life you are trained not to talk about yourself. Then you are expected to do nothing else, to talk only of yourself.

I’m a shy man.

Everybody has to work with their talent.

In New York I was taken to a restaurant where comedians gather. There were 14 who imitate me in their acts. They wanted me to give them pointers.

Most of my pictures both in this country and abroad have been of the ‘horror’ variety.

Actually, Hollywood is the reverse of what most outsiders think it is. It is not a crazy, nervous place. An actor is less bothered here than he is anywhere else. You can live your life as you please and nobody cares.

Making movies used to be fun in the old days. It isn’t any longer. It’s a coldhearted business.

I’ve never seen myself on the screen.