Christopher Quotes

I always like to watch comics and it's interesting that you can tell if someone's funny in 10 seconds.

I became an actor kind of by accident. I was in musical theater and I got a job as an actor in a play and kept going. But I never set out to be an actor; it happened over time.

It's very hard to get a movie made. You could spend your life reading scripts that never got made.

There probably aren't a lot of actors my age who tap dance.

By the time I was 7, I did walk-ons, catalogue modeling, you name it. In the Queens where I grew up, you didn't go bowling on Saturday; you went to dancing school.

All actors do what they do differently, and it doesn't matter.

Somebody said to me that I speak English almost like somebody for whom English is not their first language.

I think the fact that I grew up in show business had a real effect on my personality. If you were born in New York during the golden age of television, and you grew up on Broadway, that marks you.

I certainly have never been an actor who can play the Everyman guy - or, I don't tend to get those parts. I've tended to play eccentrics. I've played a lot of villains, of course.

Some people can do things and get away with it. Comics are famously like that. Why is it that some guys can say the most horrible things and it's not offensive, it's funny?

Well, I was sort of a jack-of-all-trades in show business for a long time. I was a singer and a dancer and then I got a job as an actor.

In the theater you rehearse for a minimum of five to six weeks. And then you get to play it. Which means you get to get better. That's the great thing about the theater.

Sometimes a certain innocence is good, but not about yourself.

I've made a couple of movies in the jungle, and I don't want to go back to the jungle.

I think that a good movie creates its own world, and that world needn't refer to anything that's real. If it's consistent, if it's entertaining, if it's interesting, it justifies its being there.

I play a lot of, maybe a little bit, cartoonish people. I've been a Bond villain, and I play a lot of villains, people who want to take over something.

I come from a part of New York that was almost entirely immigrants. I was born in America, but all of my friends' parents, everybody's parents, including my own, had come to America from Europe.

You never forget how to dance. It's just a matter of your bones working and things like that.

Usually directors hire me because I'm what they are looking for. But once in a while, and it's very rare, they will hire me and then try to make me over.

The thing about cooking is it's so interesting to watch. I don't know why, but if you go to somebody's house and they're making something, they usually say interesting things while they're cooking.

My own way of thinking is very conservative, very linear and not particularly imaginative, but if I look for things in different places, sometimes things happen.

My background is in musical comedy. I didn't know I was going to be an actor. But all my points of reference have to do with musical comedy and in being kind of a showoff.

My background is in musical comedy.

I think the fact that I was raised in show business, in New York City, in the '50s, that's affected my personality to the point that I'm a little different.

I became an actor by accident. I suppose I figured since I was in musical comedy from the time I was a teenager, I suppose I figured that I'd always been in that world to some extent.

I'm not much of an analyzer or a psychologist.

I play disturbed people a lot, but always with a bit of distance or tongue-in-cheek. Most of the villains I play are essentially harmless.

I was never a child actor. I was a child performer.

I've never made a movie I wasn't surprised to see.

I've made quite a number of movies that I've never even seen and I've made some movies that I thought were good that nobody saw... Sometimes they end up on television.

I'm not sure I'd write a good cookbook, but I might make a good cooking show.

I've been to Chicago a lot - it's one of my favorite places. My wife is from Chicago, and I worked in the theater there a lot.

Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. I never know how successful a movie is going to be - when you make a movie you're always hoping for the best.

I have always refused to do something that has offended me. I have been offered potential roles that are totally vulgar.

My father passed away a couple of years ago, but he was very old. He was almost a 100 years old. And, you know, he had a very good life. He came to America and he had a good life.

I became an actor by accident.

I have been in movies that I thought I wasn't very good in.

I grew up listening to people speaking broken English. I probably picked that up. And I probably speak English almost as a second language.

As an actor I'm rather hit and miss, I throw a lot out there, and some of it works and some of it doesn't. But this is a nice part.

I don't have kids. Maybe that's kept me young. I have a wife for almost 50 years and she looks after me a little bit like I was seven years-old.

Men who cannot exploit the co-operative benefits derived from institutions in modern knowledge economies are discriminated against by girls and so have fewer children

I've done a lot of things with theater that I'm very, very proud of.

My first Broadway show was with Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton. Maureen Stapleton, a legend in the theatre; Elizabeth Taylor, a legend, period.

Breaking Away' was a great experience. It's the kind of movie that engenders a lot of goodwill from people.

Knowing is half the battle. Explaining it is the other half.

Generally I'm wide open to people; I love helping them in any way I possibly can. But for me to invest, a business has to have a lot of creative scale; it has to be unique.

There are times when thinking about something is the worst possible policy.

And though I remember her name I cannot recall her face. All things pass.

You would always beat me; not so much because you are a better fighter as because you will not accept defeat.

It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings.