Top 19 Quotes & Sayings by James Cagney

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor James Cagney.

Last updated on November 19, 2024.

James Francis Cagney Jr. was an American actor, dancer and film director. On stage and in film, Cagney was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. He won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances. He is remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public Enemy (1931), Taxi! (1932), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), City for Conquest (1940) and White Heat (1949), finding himself typecast or limited by this reputation earlier in his career. He was able to negotiate dancing opportunities in his films and ended up winning the Academy Award for his role in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Orson Welles described Cagney as "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera".

American - Actor | July 17, 1899 - March 30, 1986

Source: Wikipedia

I got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through.

James Cagney

My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.

James Cagney

You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.

James Cagney

Perhaps people, and kids especially, are spoiled today, because all the kids today have cars, it seems. When I was young you were lucky to have a bike.

James Cagney

You dirty, double-crossing rat.

James Cagney

I`m sick of carrying guns and beating up women.

James Cagney

There's not much to say about acting but this. Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say.

James Cagney

I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor. Not until One, Two, Three. In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all sorts of scene-stealing didoes. I came close to knocking him on his ass.

James Cagney

Learn your lines… plant your feet… look the other actor in the eye… say the words… mean them.

James Cagney

New Orleans is 5 feet below sea level, which means that holes dug in the ground immediately fill with water. Coffins were punctured and sunk with weights, which didn't stop them from floating up out of the cemeteries and down the streets of the French Quarter on stormy nights. The solution was to bury people above ground, in what are called vaults.

James Cagney

Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.

James Cagney

Outside of my family, the prime concern of my life has been nature and its order, and how we have been savagely altering that order.

James Cagney

I never said, 'MMMmmm, you dirty rat!

James Cagney

You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them... I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can.

James Cagney

Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and tell the truth.

James Cagney

My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.

James Cagney

Absorption in things other than self is the secret of a happy life.

James Cagney

Once a song and dance man, always a song and dance man. Those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell.

James Cagney