Top 56 Quotes & Sayings by Christopher Plummer
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Canadian actor Christopher Plummer.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
I'm too old-fashioned to use a computer. I'm too old-fashioned to use a quill.
Simon Pegg is terribly talented, very funny, such a delicious sense of humour.
In Stratford you either turn into an alcoholic or you better write.
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.
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.
Working with Julie Andrews is like getting hit over the head with a valentine.
I think of being ornate as a Victorian quality, little to do with Shakespeare. But even Dickens wasn't ornate; he wrote with flow and naturalism.
My great-grandfather was prime minister of Canada, and I had a very Edwardian upbringing. It was a beautiful, romantic way of growing up, until the family lost its money. And I decided to be bad and rough and find the streets rather than the gates.
I didn't have to keep a bloody journal. It's terribly boring keeping a journal anyway. I hate it. You spend more time writing down life instead of living it.
In Montreal, when I grew up, I'd go to the Notre-Dame Basilica, a gorgeous cathedral in town. I'd listen to huge symphony orchestras, Pavarotti singing operas; that was absolutely marvelous. I like that aspect of the cathedral, the spectacle.
They realized I was alive again, even though I was playing an old, dying sop.
I wasn't thrilled about 'The Sound Of Music' - not the movie itself but my role in it. Captain Von Trapp was a bore, and they tried to help by giving it a bit more cynicism, but it wasn't my favourite role. I enjoyed the music, and I loved Julie Andrews.
Never forget your sense of humour.
We used to listen to Lionel Barrymore do 'A Christmas Carol' on the radio long ago, and I like Reginald Owen, who played Scrooge in the first treatment for the screen. But my favorite Scrooge was Alastair Sim. He was enchanting, an absolutely beautiful performance.
I would rather not know about how one gets parts in movies these days.
The part of Mike Wallace drew me to the movie because I thought, what an outrageous part to play.
I think a lot of directors over the years have cast me because they see something of another generation in me: you know, certain people look like they've come from the 19th century. Because I have classical background I suppose that is more suitable to patriarchal roles and easily infuses them.
I've done a lot of pictures that are ensemble, and I've not always liked the people I was working with, but that doesn't make any difference because you do the job, and often it turns out to be a great ensemble even if you didn't particularly really like anybody.
I thought, 'If I make 35, it'll be okay,' and then at 40, I got scared, and now that I'm 81, I'm scared to death.
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'm used to big roles and lots of words.
Some of the best casts I've ever worked with have been dogs.
I was always a happy kid. I'd play the piano fairly well. I did all sorts of things fairly well. But who the hell wants to be happy all the time? It's a miserable state to be in permanently. Can you imagine how dreary that would be?
A lot of people want to retire; I couldn't. You don't retire in our business. What, play golf and watch television? Oh, please.
Oh, I don't have any religious beliefs.
I was an only child, so I was very demanding. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but I wasn't very pleasant.
I actually was brought up by an Airedale. I don't really remember my parents, especially my mother. It was only the dog that I saw.
When I was young, I played the piano and studied classical music and jazz. I wanted to be a concert pianist, and if I'd devoted myself to it, I could have been. But it would have been too much work and a very lonely life.
I'm insatiably ambitious.
I couldn't believe when I first got a fan letter from Al Pacino, it was unreal.
I hate turbulence in life, but also on planes.
I think anger does fuel a successful acting career. To play the great roles, you have to learn how to blaze.
Most actors come from the streets, and their rise to fame is guided by a natural anger. It was harder to find that rage coming from a gentle background.
I admire Ridley Scott, and I'm thrilled to be making a movie for him.
Most of my life I have played a lot of famous people but most of them were dead so you have a poetic license.
I love trying to give some flesh to rather naked bones sometimes. I've always felt it my duty and to try and bring on the character's off-stage life, what happened that is not revealed.
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.
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.
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.
The devil is more interesting than God.
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.
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.
You're only two years older than me, darling. Where have you been all my life?
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.
I just can't tell you what fun I've had being a member of the world's second oldest profession.
I don't want death to suddenly interrupt what I'm doing. I don't like the idea of death at all.
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 buried myself so much in the classics that I felt, "Well now, I've played all the big parts, whether badly or goodly, I don't give a damn, but at least I've played them all. Now, let's start again. Let's start the whole career again." And it makes you feel like you're beginning again, it really does.
I rather like the idea of defying death.
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.
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.
We all live with more mortality because we're all on drugs.
History remembers most what you did last.
I just do what I want to do, and if it's a rather interesting script - which I found.
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.
Related Authors
Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes
Austrian
Actor
Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes
English
Actor
Bruce Lee Quotes
American
Actor
Clint Eastwood Quotes
American
Actor
Daniel Radcliffe Quotes
British
Actor
Dwayne Johnson Quotes
American
Actor
Jeff Bridges Quotes
American
Actor
Johnny Depp Quotes
American
Actor
Kevin Hart Quotes
American
Actor
Kevin Spacey Quotes
American
Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio Quotes
American
Actor
Rob Lowe Quotes
American
Actor
Robert Pattinson Quotes
English
Actor
Sylvester Stallone Quotes
American
Actor
Will Rogers Quotes
American
Actor
Zach Braff Quotes
American
Actor