Peter Lorre

“I've been billed as the world's most imitated actor.”

“I'm a shy man.”

“Some people think I was in movies I've never been in.”

“I don't like the word 'villain' or 'heavy.'”

“I can't understand why I am always being called a 'boogie-man' type of actor.”

“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.”

“You'd be amazed how people love me.”

“It got so that I couldn't play anything but a Peter Lorre character.”

“The public likes me as a bad guy and I'm going to go on being one just as long as I can.”

“For a lazy man I work awfully hard.”

“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.”

“Most of my pictures both in this country and abroad have been of the 'horror' variety.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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 couldn't live without acting. In fact anybody who can live without that feeling is a complete idiot.”

“I can't stand to live in Europe. And New York isn't much better.”

“I've never seen myself on the screen.”