Bela Lugosi

“If you are not serious, people will sense it.”

“I have played Dracula a thousand times on stage and I find I have become thoroughly settled in the technique of the stage and not of the screen.”

“I don't have a dime left. I am dependent on my friends for food and a small old-age pension.”

“I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf. I don't say I don't like people at all, but, to tell you the truth, I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds.”

“If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.”

“Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting.”

“It is women who bear the race in bloody agony. Suffering is a kind of horror. Blood is a kind of horror. Women are born with horror in their very bloodstream. It is a biological thing.”

“People, chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging to certainties... they live like ants.”

“I studied at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts for four years and emerged with a degree.”

“I'll take any story if it's good.”

“My close-up was magnificent!”

“Of all the roles I've done on the stage, I'm partial to Cyrano de Bergerac.”

“Actors were exploited no less by the capitalist managers than they were by the state.”

“The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.”

“Death, the final, triumphant lover.”

“The vampire was a complete change from the usual romantic characters I was playing, but it was a success.”

“The screen magnifies everything, even the way you are thinking.”

“You can't make people believe in you if you play a horror part with your tongue in your cheek.”

“Without movie parts I was reduced to freak status. I just couldn't stand it.”

“I'll be truthful. The weekly paycheck is the most important thing to me.”