Words matter. These are the best Peter Lorre Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
There is really no such thing as terrifying people. It’s the situation and the scene that count. Not the actor.
Most of my pictures both in this country and abroad have been of the ‘horror’ variety.
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.
You’d be amazed how people love me.
It got so that I couldn’t play anything but a Peter Lorre character.
Everybody has to work with their talent.
My family encouraged me to paint, but I was never allowed to go to the theater. Naturally, this made me interested in the theater.
I have made over 70 pictures and in only 10 of them did I portray a really ‘bad man.’
People call me Pepe Le Moko. I never played that role.
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.
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.
The audience loves me.
I don’t like the word ‘villain’ or ‘heavy.’
I’m a shy man.
If I had wanted to remain one character, I could still be playing Mr. Moto.
For money, I can be a nice guy.
I’ve never seen myself on the screen.
I can’t stand to live in Europe. And New York isn’t much better.
I’m easy to imitate. All you need are the soft-boiled egg eyes and the bedroom voice.
I don’t want to brag, but I can make people laugh and then be terrified.
I couldn’t live without acting. In fact anybody who can live without that feeling is a complete idiot.
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.
For the type of parts I play, I should be booed. But it’s odd, fans just adore me. I can’t explain it.
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.
I’ve been billed as the world’s most imitated actor.
I can’t understand why I am always being called a ‘boogie-man’ type of actor.
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.
Some people think I was in movies I’ve never been in.
Making movies used to be fun in the old days. It isn’t any longer. It’s a coldhearted business.
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.
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.
The public likes me as a bad guy and I’m going to go on being one just as long as I can.
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.
