Angela Lansbury Quotes

I was put under contract. A major studio. I got nominated for an Academy Award. Isn't that ridiculous? I mean, at the age of 18!

A sitcom. I hate that word.

Because lifestyles are changing constantly the rules of etiquette are changing too
a little slower than lifestyles perhaps, but still changing.

I'm not going to be dancing with the stars at this stage in my life. But I want to dance and bop around, and I did, and I can.

I started in London, as a kid. My mother knew I had sort of an inbred talent. She was an actress, so I inherited it from her. But I think I got a lot of it from my grandfather, who was a great politician.

I can't say that I deserve longlife; I don't. I've just been around long enough. They say, "My God, she's still here."

Well oddly enough, I liken the years at MGM, and I was there for about eight years, to doing stock, what we used to call repertory or stock, playing a whole bunch of different roles.

I have never directed. But I think I could. I have thought about it. I'm a bit long in the tooth to start.

I never regretted what I turned down.

Now the Gielgud Theater is a very famous old theater, because it was originally called the Globe, and the Globe is where my mother made her very first professional appearance in London, was at the Globe Theater.

Everything I did actually helped to build the revenue, shall we say, of experience, which enabled me to play a variety of roles as I got older.

Better to be busy than to be busy worrying.

I usually arrive at the first rehearsal with a vague memory of most of it. But the real work happens in rehearsal, oddly enough, because what happens is that you match the words to the movement, and once you know where you're moving, then the words that accompany that movement become not locked into your mind and your brain and your whole body.

I haven't been back to London for 40 years to do a play, so to play Madame Arcati there, she would be tickled to death knowing that that was what I was doing. I hope she would. She was a wonderfully unique and very special, very darling woman.

The collaboration really begins once the rehearsal starts. This is when the actor takes his place, because he becomes the one who is going to bring the words of the author off the page.

The Manchurian Candidate was the most important movie I was in, let's face it.

My memory about names and places now is dreadful. But lines, I can remember.

When I opened up in "Gaslight," for instance, playing that narky maid, that all came about from my experience and my training up to that point, and so nothing was wasted.

Psychologically, you learn the values that are inherent in the dialogue, and you learn to apply it to the way you read the lines. That's acting. You're not yourself saying those lines, you're somebody else.

Actually the years when I was playing totally un - well, they were just roles that just went by the board, you wouldn't want to know. But anyway, I'm glad I had that chance to build my craft.

Believe me, it jabs you. When you're on the side of buses and New York loves you, you love to go out there every night. It's like a race. Curtain opens, out you go, and New York is yours.

The thing I always say is that I wasn't going out reaching for roles, I wasn't fighting for roles - people came to me. They always came to me.

You learn the values that are inherent in the scene that the writer has written. You learn about who you as a character are in relation to those others who are working with you within that scene.

I'd been out of the movies for years, I had had a wonderful stage career, yes, in musicals and so on, but you don't really make any money in the theater.

You learn a great deal that you can feed into your craft which gives you the experience that you actually need later on, when you start to get the really great roles. You've played that part to a certain degree in that picture, and you played that one in that, and so on. You add it all up, and you have that experience.

Clint Eastwood is an extraordinary director because he knows the value of a buck. He knows where it will show on the screen.

I don't care whether it's a chance meeting or playing a role that you thought was totally wrong but you did it anyway. It will often turn out to be the thing that will lead you to the role which is sublime.

The theater is magical and addictive.

I just went along for the ride. It was a God-given gift. It is. So you can't say well, you wasted your life because you spent all of it acting, but I think gosh, I've never been to China, I've never been to Japan. I've never been to Yellowstone Park.

I think of myself as a journeyman actress. I will attempt almost anything that I think that I can bring off. It could be almost anything.

I've worked with the greatest actors, and they're all gone. This is what's so desperate to me.

Here I am, I still go on, you know, like the tides.

It's better not to try to learn all the lines by rote. It's a very bad idea, in fact. You have to do it by using the process, and as I say, the process is to learn during rehearsals, and that's how you'll do it.

Mystery is something that appeals to most everybody.

I can't say that I pursued a career. I really didn't, it just sort of happened.

I really wanted to go back to the theater, the live theater. That was the thing I had never had a chance to do, even though I had trained to be a stage actress.

I'm Angie to everybody, you've got to learn.

I honestly consider that the greatest gift to me, is the reaction that I get from my work. That is a given which I never, ever take for granted. But to be given that by audiences, individuals, on the street, in the theater, is an extraordinary feeling.