Top 110 Peter Falk Quotes

The truth is, no one is like Columbo.

When I was young, I was looking for people to look up to – role models I could respect.

The first time I ever spoke to John Cassavetes was at a Lakers game. I got up to go for a hot dog, and he was coming in the opposite direction. I don’t know who said hello first, but we started talking, and it turned out that he went to high school with my first wife, Alice.

Columbo was never comfortable if somebody considered him unique or smart.

In 1958, I was shooting a movie in Florida, and I decided to go to Havana, Cuba, to see what it was like.

I like stories that grow, that have unpredictable layers. As opposed to Hollywood movies that start out with a lot of shock and noise and peter out into an unconvincing cliche.

It became the joke of the neighbourhood. If the umpire ruled me out on a bad call, I’d take the fake eye out and hand it to him.

I used to dread somebody saying, ‘Whatsa matter with your eye?’

I lose things. I am preoccupied. I am misty. Eyeglasses? I go through eyeglasses like tissue.

God didn’t design anyone to be recognized by 2 billion people.

Sometimes I was in school plays, but only when the kid they’d originally picked got sick and they asked me to substitute.

If your mind is at work, we’re in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we’ll come up with something original.

My father’s whole life was work. He had a retail store in Ossining, New York, and I mean, he was down there at 6:15 every morning. The store didn’t open until 9, but he hadda be down there. That’s all he knew.

I love Chicago. It’s one of the great cities. I’m crazy about the town. It reminds me of New York when it was at its best, the New York that used to be and is no more. I love the architecture, the old stuff and the new stuff.

Going to Hartford turned out to be the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.

When I was a kid growing up, you maybe secretly wanted to be an actor, but you never said.

When I was growing up in Ossining, N.Y., playing pool with the guys, the thought that any one of us might become an actor was as far-fetched as being knighted by the queen of England.

Children ran up to me shouting, ‘Columbo!’ At first, it gave me great pleasure, but later, I said to myself that those children should have had their own heroes instead of admiring a cop from Los Angeles.

I’ve been asked a few thousand times how much of Columbo is Falk and vice versa.

I never understood a word John Cassavetes said. And I think he did that deliberately.

I thought actors were artists and that artists had to be European.

Acting is like golf: analysis leads to paralysis.

You think you’re in another civilization, another time, and then you see antennas coming out of these hovels, and your mouth falls open when you see the descendants of the Incas shouting ‘Columbo! Columbo!’

The only mountain that I would still like to climb: I’d like to break 85.

I’m just looking to get through the day.

Strange thing, this television.

In the beginning, when you’re acting in amateur theater and off-Broadway, it was unheard of that anyone else would get your costume. And it was important to get a good costume. You put time into that.

Acting is like golf: analysis leads to paralysis.

Actors know one thing: If you’re left just with words, you’re in trouble.

Sure, I miss some things about the stage. The thing I like is the immediacy. But then I complain, ‘I gotta do the same part for six months.’

I used to dread somebody saying, ‘Whatsa matter with your eye?’

I’m just looking to get through the day.

My idea of Heaven is to wake up, have a good breakfast, and spend the rest of the day drawing.

Initially, they wanted Columbo to wear a driving coat. I said: ‘Are you kidding? He’s not an English aristocrat.’

To be totally sincere, I’d surely be a better actor today if I hadn’t played Columbo all these years.

You talk about what a director, he was smart. He said, Turn the camera on!

I used to take girls out on a date to Night Court. And I’ll tell you, most girls, they got a kick out of going to Night Court. ‘Cause you get a lot of laughs… and it’s cheap.

I came to Hollywood and nobody knew me. I was on a coupla TV shows.

Sometimes I was in school plays, but only when the kid they’d originally picked got sick and they asked me to substitute.

There isn’t an Eskimo who doesn’t love ‘Columbo.’

There’s a bit of a problem. The script that I like, the network doesn’t like. The script that they like, I don’t like.

I was a street-guy villain. I was a street-corner villain. I was an illiterate villain. All rough edges.

The female body is awesome.

When I was growing up in Ossining, N.Y., playing pool with the guys, the thought that any one of us might become an actor was as far-fetched as being knighted by the queen of England.

Along came a police lieutenant named Columbo, and my life would never be the same.

I don’t dwell on it. But I guess everybody hopes that they go in their sleep and that it won’t be long and painful.

The whole thing was an actor’s dream – getting a character that tickles you so much you can’t wait to act as him.

To be a theater actor, I think you have to do plays all the time.

I watch practically no TV – ah, what the hell do I watch? Oh, I was for a long time addicted to CNN.

I think people identify with Columbo because he is an average man.

God didn’t design anyone to be recognized by 2 billion people.

I did do my own stunts.

What’s the name of that famous museum in Paris? The Louvre? I went through that place in 20 minutes.

Good actors are always looking for props. They’re looking for behavior. It makes it a lot easier. You’re not solely dependent of what’s coming out of your mouth. You’re also less self-conscious, less aware of the camera.

Even the first year of ‘Columbo,’ ‘Columbo’ was Jesus Christ, No. 1, you know.

I do figure every angle of a guy I’m acting – but not consciously ’til afterward.

The celebrity craze is a little much. But it’s good for me, so you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

I hate to talk about typecasting, because being typecast as Columbo ain’t cancer.

If you were brought up in the ’40s, a kid in Ossining, New York, hanging out at the poolroom and stealing, how can you think, ‘Here I am in Ossining. I, too, can be a movie star!’

I remember being amazed that actors had a union. I thought only coal miners had unions, or guys that worked in automobile plants. That’s an indication of how naive I was.

I never turned a part down when they offered me money.

The celebrity craze is a little much. But it’s good for me, so you don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

My idea of Heaven is to wake up, have a good breakfast, and spend the rest of the day drawing.

In the beginning, when you’re acting in amateur theater and off-Broadway, it was unheard of that anyone else would get your costume. And it was important to get a good costume. You put time into that.

The entertainment industry is loaded with extraordinarily talented people. But the true, genuine originals, they’re rare.

What wouldn’t have happened to me if I hadn’t ended up in Hartford, Connecticut.

I’m not an ace at small talk.

They wouldn’t take me in the navy because of my glass eye. So I joined the merchant navy, who allowed monocular crew if you worked in the kitchens. You’re not wanted on deck or in the engine room with one eye, but you’re good to fire up the ovens and cook hundreds of chops.

If it wasn’t for the Mark Twain Masquers, I don’t know where my life would have gone.

I’ve been there a thousand years, and I never felt comfortable. Beverly Hills – when I first saw it, I thought they put it up this morning. You got to pack water to get to the drugstore.

I had no idea when I graduated from high school and then from graduate school what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea that I was ever going to be an actor.

The first time I ever spoke to John Cassavetes was at a Lakers game. I got up to go for a hot dog, and he was coming in the opposite direction. I don’t know who said hello first, but we started talking, and it turned out that he went to high school with my first wife, Alice.

Usually, I get hired because I’m tall.

I’m secretly very stuffy.

I didn’t become an actor until I was an old man of 28 or 29. I declared to the world that I was an actor. Nobody heard me, but I did declare it.

In order to be totally spontaneous, you can’t be too obsessed with accuracy, but if you’re inaccurate in a drawing, it will look fake, and when you act, it will sound fake. You have to find miraculously some proper balance between the two, but there’s no formula.

In the theater, you didn’t have any marks. Your instincts in rehearsal told you what the blocking was. On film, they reversed it. They decided ahead of time what your instincts were, before you even arrived.

There were no artists in Ossining, which was the home of Sing Sing prison. Most of the parents of the guys I knew were guards there.

Your instincts for what’s dramatic are the same whether you’re working on a drawing or on a script.

I lose things. I am preoccupied. I am misty. Eyeglasses? I go through eyeglasses like tissue.