Quotes

[from one of his final interviews] I have a feeling the studio is almost beginning to consider me an actor now, instead of a type.

[on his character in The Lodger (1944)] A lonely man, a man obsessed by an imaginary wrong dealt him by one woman but which he has transferred to the entire sex.

(In an interview after the release of "The Lodger) Lots of people get a great kick out of evil efficiently wrought, and they write in and pat me on the back. Then, too, there are the righteous people who think I'm actually the kind of person I portray on the screen, and who enumerate the various ways in which they would like to eliminate me. The only ones I really like are the letters from the few kind souls who realize that I'm only an actor trying to make a living.

(1940s interview) I signed with 20th Century Fox because at that time there was only one other character man, John Carradine, under contract, and, of course, we two couldn't ever vie for roles.

(In a 1940s press release about his introduction to the theater as a page boy at Stratford-on-Avon) I never wanted to be anything but an actor after that. There have been times, though, when I've wished my ambition wasn't so firmly fixed.