Top 42 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Lorre

Explore popular quotes and sayings by Peter Lorre.

Last updated on December 18, 2024.

Peter Lorre was an Austrian-Hungarian and American actor. Lorre began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before moving to Germany where he worked first on the stage, then in film in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Lorre caused an international sensation in the Weimar Republic-era film M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang, in which he portrayed a serial killer who preys on little girls.

Source: Wikipedia

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

Peter Lorre

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.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

I'm not scaring anybody for no money!

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

I didn't speak English very well, but I studied day and night so I'd be ready for my first break. When Hitchcock interviewed me I didn't understand a word be said, but I had been told that he liked to tell jokes so I watched him carefully and when I thought he was waiting for a laugh... I laughed.

Peter Lorre

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.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

Everybody has to work with their talent.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

The audience loves me.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

I've never seen myself on the screen.

Peter Lorre

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.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

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.

Peter Lorre

For a lazy man I work awfully hard.

Peter Lorre

The public likes me as a bad guy and I'm going to go on being one just as long as I can.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

Terrible letters came to me. Letters from strange people; people whom I never believed lived in the world; depraved and distorted minds, thinking they saw in me the perfect companion, a fellow psychopathic.

Peter Lorre

There is really no such thing as terrifying people. It's the situation and the scene that count. Not the actor.

Peter Lorre

I don't like the word 'villain' or 'heavy.'

Peter Lorre

For money, I can be a nice guy.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

Just memorizing and emoting, for that you get paid. But that isn't acting.

Peter Lorre

I wouldn't mind doing those sinister roles again, but in pictures I will direct myself.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

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.

Peter Lorre

You'd be amazed how people love me.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

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.

Peter Lorre

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.

Peter Lorre

I'm a shy man.

Peter Lorre

Despite the fact Hollywood classes me as a 'type,' I find the roles broad enough to handle all the acting technique I can summon together.

Peter Lorre

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

Peter Lorre

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.

Peter Lorre

If I gave you any thought I probably would.

Peter Lorre

Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?

Peter Lorre

Top 42 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Lorre

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