Top 123 Quotes & Sayings by Gene Wilder
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Gene Wilder.
Last updated on December 22, 2024.
My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.
I love the art of acting, and I love film, because you always have another chance if you want it. You know, if we - if this isn't going well, you can't say - well, you could say - let's stop. Let's start over again, Gene, because you were too nervous.
So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.
My mother was suffering every day of her life, and what right did I have to be happy if she was suffering? So whenever I got happy about something, I felt the need to cut it off, and the only way to cut it off was to pray. 'Forgive me Lord.' For what, I didn't know.
And in 'Frisco Kid' and in 'The Woman in Red' I had to ride badly. Then you have to really ride well in order to ride badly.
My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.
I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while.
I had a unique form: a Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
The thing I love about making movies is the peace of mind that I know I don't have to be perfect the first time. I can be perfect the second time or the third time.
I don't like giving speeches. It makes me nervous.
My wife and I water color, paint water colors.
If there's an audience, I think they're going to expect me to be funny. But what if I'm not funny? What if I fail?
If something comes along that's really good, and I think I would be good for it, I'd be happy to do it. But not too many came along. I mean, they came along for the first, I don't know, 15, 18 films, but I didn't do that many. But then I didn't want to do the kind of junk I was seeing.
There seems to be a pattern. I get one good script every two years.
When I was in desperate trouble for maybe eight or nine years, I went to a neuropsychiatrist.
When I'm not working on something, I seem to go through periods of depression. It helps to keep busy.
Mel Brooks is one of the few authentic geniuses working in comedy in America today.
What good is a character who's always winking at the audience to let them in on the secret?
I said something really stupid once. I told a friend that my mother was so beautiful, but my dad was ugly. My dad heard it and just laughed it off, but I felt guilty. It haunted me for years. I should never have said that.
I've had a very good life and a very good career. I have no regrets.
I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track.
I live in a small town in Connecticut, and they don't write scripts there, but I get them anyway because my agent is in Los Angeles.
I wanted to do - there was this film called 'Magic' that Anthony Hopkins did. And the director wanted me. The writer wanted me. Joe Levine said no, I don't want any comedians in this.
Pride is not the worst of sins. In fact, it's one of the most interesting ones.
When you fall in love, and you're very young, you think that that's the love of your life. And maybe it is, but it usually doesn't turn out that way.
Success is a terrible thing and a wonderful thing. If you can enjoy it, it's wonderful. If it starts eating away at you, and they're waiting for more from me, or what can I do to top this, then you're in trouble. Just do what you love. That's all I want to do.
I love acting, especially if it's a fantasy of some kind, where it's not just realistic, it's not naturalism.
I've become pretty philosophical about a lot of things, including death. It doesn't get to me.
I never thought of it as God. I didn't know what to call it. I don't believe in devils, but demons I do because everyone at one time or another has some kind of a demon, even if you call it by another name, that drives them.
I was a milksop as a kid. I had no confidence, no guts. I felt I was going to be someone else someday - someone who didn't have my weaknesses.
Actors fall into this trap if they missed being loved for who they really were and not for what they could do - sing, dance, joke about - then they take that as love.
I write funny. If I can make my wife laugh, I know I'm on the right track. But yes, I don't like to get Maudlin. And I have a tendency towards it.
I worked two days in Texas and two days in Hollywood on 'Bonnie and Clyde,' and that was it. I had no idea how it was going to turn out. And when I saw it, I was so upset, or fascinated, or something, by the sight of myself on the screen that I could hardly pay attention to the rest of the movie.
Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!
I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.
I never used to believe in fate. I used to think you make your own life, and then you call it fate.
Lots of things are hard work, but I think writing, for me, after I started acting at 13 years old. I like writing now much more than I do acting only because, well, partly because the scripts that are offered are junk.
Sidney Poitier was directing a film called 'Hanky Panky.' And he said, 'Do you want to come with me to New York to see Gilda Radner in 'Lunch Hour' on Broadway? I said, 'I don't need to see her, I love her. I've wanted to write something for her for a long time. So it's OK by me.'
The world is not based on fairness. Human beings can rise to fairness, can administer something that makes it fair or just. But that's not God.
I had a daughter and lost her a long while ago. That's too sad a story to go into.
I know a lot of sad people who aren't comedians.
I'm not from Hollywood, and I'm also not one of the people who wants to do a tell-all, and I hate tell-alls. I didn't want to tell all.
I didn't want to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actor - maybe a comic actor, but a real actor - by real, I mean not a comedian. I wanted to be an actor.
I trust if your life is right, the right things will happen at the right time. If the chords are in harmony inside, I think other things will happen in the same way. That sounded highfalutin' to me once, but I believe it now.
Whatever simplicity I've achieved in writing, I think I owe most of it to Jean Renoir and Hemingway: simple, declarative sentences. I've read some very good writers, but the sentences were so long that I've forgotten what the point was.
I'm stopped by mothers who say, 'Mr. Wilder, what advice would you give to my young boy? He's really talented.'
I like writing books. I'd rather be at home with my wife. I can write, take a break, come out, have a glass of tea, give my wife a kiss, and go back in and write some more. It's not so bad. I am really lucky.
We all grew up on movies with scenes where the actor is lying, and you know he's lying, but he wants to make sure you know it's a lie, and so he overacts and all but winks at you, and everybody in the world except for the girl he's talking to knows he's lying.
I'm an actor, not a clown.
I don't want to do 'Hamlet.' I don't want to do Robert Redford roles or Mel Gibson roles or Kevin Costner roles, because I'm not going to be good at them.
What do actors really want? To be great actors? Yes, but you can't buy talent, so it's best to leave the word 'great' out of it. I think to be believed, onstage or onscreen, is the one hope that all actors share.
When your mother gives you confidence about anything that you do, you carry that confidence with you.
I'm in complete remission. I'm alive and well.
I'm not so funny. Gilda was funny. I'm funny on camera sometimes. In life, once in a while. Once in a while. But she was funny. She spent more time worrying about being liked than anything else.
If my mother hadn't laughed at the funny things I did, I probably wouldn't be a comic actor. After she had her first heart attack, the doctor said, 'Try to make her laugh.' And that was the first time I tried to make anyone laugh.
I'm going to tell you what my religion is. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Period. Terminato. Finito.
A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things; you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.'
I'm not a natural writer like, let's say - I'm not talking about Arthur Miller; that's a whole other thing - but let's say Woody Allen. But the more I've written, the more I've found that there is a deep well in me somewhere that wants to express things that I'm not going to find unless I write them myself.
I don't mean to sound - I don't want it to come out funny, but I don't like show business. I love - I love acting in films. I love it.
I feel very Jewish, and I feel very grateful to be Jewish. But I don't believe in God or anything to do with the Jewish religion.
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