Morgan Freeman Quotes

I'm not the smartest dude in the world. (After all... I picked a career in acting.)

I'd done light comedy. In some quarters, About Last Night... is a romantic comedy. So it wasn't like I'd been doing Sophie's Choice my entire career. But for whatever reason, nobody had really given me the room or the ability to be out and out funny. And Lorne [Michaels] and Mike [Myers] and Chris [Farley] and Dana [Carvey], that crop really helped me do that.

I'm not a comedian. I'm what you call a good, old-fashioned working actor who has had delusions of grandeur for my entire career and has known what I want to do.

I'd love to do comedy. I'd probably have to get my laughing fits in check, because generally if I've done comedy, I'm usually the straight character that plays against the very obviously funny character, so that's really hard when the person is really hilarious.

Many times during auditions, I was told that I couldn't carry a note with a bucket, and that I sure couldn't play the piano.

There is no humor in heaven.

I wouldn't want to play Miss Hannigan. I'm not a villain. She's mean to little children! I can't do that. That would disrupt my brand.

I play a garbage man who moonlights as a stand-up comedian. Terrible.

My agent had told me that he was going to make me the Janet Gaynor of England—I was going to play all the sweet roles. Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers.

A female's career as an actor is very different from a male's career as an actor. That's just the way it is. So, I'm fascinated by really strong male careers that have inspired me, and also really incredible male roles.

If you'd have asked me when I was auditioning for High School Musical if I ever thought I was going to play a Marine.

I know it sounds very typical to say, but the best part of being an actor, and the reason why I think a lot of actors do it, is that it's always changing. You get to play so many things that it's like you've had so many different careers.

If I want to keep working as an actor, I'm going to become a comedian who does fart jokes.

I just do little jokes all the time and people think I'm serious. I know exactly who Gordon Ramsay is, I know exactly who Gordon Brown is... I just say jokes but they think I'm serious which I think is funny and I think I kind of play up the image sometimes because - whatever - it's just entertainment.

I might play a lot of dramatic roles, but I'm really sort of silly.

An actor is an impersonator; he plays many different roles. If you played the same role all the time, God that'd be a boring career.

ZANY, n. A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the _buffone_, or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play. The zany was progenitor to the specialist in humor, as we to-day have the unhappiness to know him. In the zany we see an example of creation; in the humorist, of transmission. Another excellent specimen of the modern zany is the curate, who apes the rector, who apes the bishop, who apes the archbishop, who apes the devil.

Billy (Martin) was a great one for jokes. He liked to play a joke more than anyone I ever knew.

Humor is such a strong weapon, such a strong answer.

If I wasn't acting, I have no clue what I'd be doing 'cause I have no other talent.

In my career, I've had kind of a strange trajectory as an actor. I started out doing movies and theater and stuff, but then I had a terrible problem with stage fright as an actor on stage, and I quit stage acting for a long, long time.

It's always fun to play the innocent, no matter what you're doing. If you feel like you're doing the right thing, you can get away with a lot comedically. I had definitely missed not having a conscience.

Divers alarums and excursions', she read, uncertainly. 'That means lots of terrible happenings, said Magrat. 'You always put that in plays.' Alarums and what?', said Nanny Ogg, who hadn't been listening. Excursions', said Magrat patienly. Oh.' Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. 'The seaside would be nice,' she said. Oh do shut up, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.

Humour is the most engaging cowardice. With it myself I have been able to hold some of my enemy in play far out of gunshot.

It's a dangerous game that comedy plays. Sometimes it tells you the truth; sometimes it delays it.