A Quote by Roddy McDowall

They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York. — © Roddy McDowall
They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York.
I want to retire in New York, let's be quite frank. I think a lot of people jumped the gun when I said I wanted to be a free agent. And yeah, I want people to come to play in New York. I want them to want to play in New York. I want New York to be that place where guys want to come play.
New York is such a super power, New York can do anything, you know what I mean? They could do anything! When New Yorkers band together, they can really change the world.
I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen--but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!
New York was always more expensive than any other place in the United States, but you could live in New York - and by New York, I mean Manhattan. Brooklyn was the borough of grandparents. We didn't live well. We lived in these horrible places. But you could live in New York. And you didn't have to think about money every second.
I knew that I wanted to live in a city, but had never really been to New York. But I was begging my parents as a kid to move to New York, so it was just something that I sort of knew from a young age.
I came to New York when I was 21, 22. I couldn't speak English. I knew I wanted to go to fashion school.
When I was a boy, cricket was very, very English. Anyone who spoke English and anyone from a big town could play. And that was it.
In New York, I was excited about the music in New York because the only music that I was more or less involved with in the South was either country and western or hillbilly music as we used to call it when I was a kid and, ah, gospel. There was no, there was no in between. And when I got to New York all the other musics that's in the world just came into my head whether it was the classics, jazz, I never knew what jazz was about all, had heard anything about jazz.
When people, especially from France, would ask me to talk about or so they could write about New York Jewish humor, I'd say I don't know anything about New York Jewish humor. I know who Zero Mostel was and I know Mel Brooks, but that's about all I could tell you about New York Jewish humor.
The New York book was a visual diary and it was also kind of personal newspaper. I wanted it to look like the news. I didn’t relate to European photography. It was too poetic and anecdotal for me… the kinetic quality of new york, the kids, dirt, madness—I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I would be grainy and contrasted and black. Id crop, blur, play with the negatives. I didn’t see clean technique being right for New York. I could imagine my pictures lying in the gutter like the New York Daily News.
NATO could be obsolete, because - and I was very strong on this, and it was actually covered very accurately in the New York Times, which is unusual for the New York Times, to be honest - but I said, they do not focus on terror. And I was very strong. And I said it numerous times.
When I left New York, not a lot of shows were happening there, but 'Golden Boy' is such a New York show.
No one ever said 'no' to me about anything. No one ever told me anything was wrong. Never. No one ever said, 'You can't be a fashion designer.' No one ever said, 'You're a boy and you can't take tap-dancing lessons.' No one ever said, 'You're a boy and you can't have long hair.'
I have friends in New York that won't leave New York, and they're really talented people, but they'd rather take an acting class in New York than do a play in Florida or Boston. That's just weird to me, but they get into that I've-got-to-be-in-the-center-of-the-universe mentality. I'm not that way.
I just did a play in New York which has been my best experience that I've had for maybe ever. It was Paul Weitz's play called Privilege and I was in New York for three months.
Being in New York as a whole, Brooklyn as well, you can do anything you want. That's by far the best part about New York, besides just the hustle and grit and grind of Brooklyn specifically, but the best food. Anybody you want to get in contact with, odds are if they don't live in New York, they're passing through New York at some point in time.
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