Ernest Borgnine Quotes

Yeah, I am a character actor.

You can either be a movie star or an actor. I'm an actor.

People call me a movie star. If you're in the business, a movie star is someone who can make a film bankable. My name and $6 million will make a $6 million movie. I'm a working actor. Because I started late, I had a very short run as a leading man, and my films didn't make money in America.

I was never really a character actor - I was a leading man who was always cast as a character. I wanted to be Jack Nicholson or Jean Gabin.

I was only a leading man for a minute; now I'm a character actor.

I just wanted to be a working character actor.

I look at leading men because that's ultimately what I'm aspiring to do. But I also look at character actors and people that I'm just in awe by, just because I can relate to it.

The great exception to that, of course, is Johnny Depp, who is absolutely the ultimate character actor. Johnny Depp is the future of the character actor and thanks to his success maybe we will see the return of an era when my sort of actor is back in vogue. It's not in vogue for me to be in Hollywood movies as lots of different people.

There's nothing wrong with being an actor, if that's what a man wants. But there's everything wrong with achieving an exalted status simply because one photographs well and is able to handle dialogue".

I'm a character actor and that's what I do. All the roles that I've had have been mainly support roles, because character actors don't usually get the lead in movies. It rarely happens.

Thank God for television. I've been able to consistently work in television even when people say, 'Oh my God, I haven't seen you since this film or that project.' At least I'm working. It's very difficult to get that next movie role. I'm grateful to have the television world accept me.

In L.A., I was meeting people who were all actors. My mind started to open up to what acting was. I didn't realize that Brad Pitt was a real person. I didn't think he was a robot or a machine, but I thought you were just born into acting - that it's a family tree, kind of like NASCAR. No one can just say, 'Hey, I'm going to be a NASCAR driver.'

My career plan at this point is 'Ice Age 5' through '10,' and even '12,' and 'Spider Man' - you know, basically I'd be Emma Stone's dad for the rest of my career. I really don't have any problem doing that.

I didn't go to L.A. because I wanted to move to California. I went to L.A. to work as an actor.

I was born a character actor.

Guys like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Sam Rockwell are the guys I look up to and have the kind of career I'd like to emulate.

The actors I respect are the ones who see it as a career and manage to live reasonably normal lives, like Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I think there are always actor parts, and then there are movie-star parts, and an actor's always an actor until he does a movie-star part.

Fortunately and unfortunately, people don't see me as a character actor. They see me as a leading man or nothing, which makes it really hard to get work.

I won an Academy Award for 'The Cider House Rules,' playing an American.

I always knew I'd be more of a character actor than a leading man, and I always wanted to take that and run with it.

Some of the biggest movie stars in the world are essentially characters.

I realise that certain actors project their own image onto the screen - those who are the same on as they are off. But I've never had the necessary statistics to be able to do that sort of thing, and so, anyway, I always wanted to be a character actor.

Mature roles full of substance the kind played by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino - my favourite actors - is what I want to do.

I have nothing against the film industry, but my mom asked me to do anything but act.