Peter York Quotes

Since I was 18, I've been under orders from magazines and newspapers - chiefly The New York Times and Rolling Stone - to step into the lives of musicians, actors, and artists, and somehow find out who they really are underneath the mask they present to the public. But I didn't always succeed.

I'm not a straight man, but I play one on television.

Just because I look sexy on the cover of Rolling Stone doesn't mean I'm naughty.

Television forces people to be larger than life. I would be too shy.

I don't mind women who want to act. That's fine. It's odd that men want to act, in that there's still a degree of vanity associated with it.

The image we have of a famous person often bears no relation to them.

How come actors feel like they have to give some kind of personal revelation attached to the project?

We have a society where every hit maker and TV presenter is gay.

It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.

On 'Being Mary Jane,' I learned to embrace sex symbol.

I would like to say a few things about that photo in 'Tatler'. I have no regrets. The article was about the 20 cleverest people in England, covered up only by the thing that makes them clever. A saxophonist, for example, had only his saxophone, and an artist, his easel. So I was covered by books.

You see a Donald Trump on TV, just like you'd see Joan Rivers on TV when she was living, and you see a real person. That's the Donald Trump that I know.

When you play the king of elves and alien warlords, little me is very uninteresting. But, at the same time, actors feel this obligation to be transparent, and I truly don't understand the point.

People become actors because they want to hide, and it's not easy to talk about myself. I accept that a certain responsibility goes with being an actor in the public eye, but I haven't found a comfortable way to deal with it.

Entertainment is often a medium in which you can put yourself front and center.

There's almost a Rorschach-test quality about writing about 'Playboy'. What comes out in the press is not so much about me as it is about society.

I hate getting my photograph taken; just because I'm a musician doesn't mean I should have to sell my soul and have pictures of myself on stage with a red face and sweaty armpits plastered over 'Heat!' every week. I'm not a model.

No one really has any idea about me. To me, what I give you is what happens onscreen, and past that, anything you're coming up with in your own head, you're creating in your own mind.

Some people will never take Madonna seriously - just as many never took Marilyn Monroe seriously. Novelty images - especially that of a sex symbol - are hard to erase.

I'm not a sex symbol, at least in the conventional sense.

When you're an artist, you're expected to describe yourself in interviews every day in five words.

Why should men be constrained by antiquated stereotypes of masculinity? What does it even mean to 'Be a Real Man' anymore? Shouldn't we all be celebrating a wide range of definitions of manhood?

I published my first book, 'Drinking & Tweeting,' when I first started 'Housewives' and was being portrayed as a fun girl who spoke the truth.

For a long time I wasn't allowed to be anything but 'The Governess' when I went on TV, even if I went on a talk show I had to be in costume. I mean guys, I own clothes!

I knew I had to be the gay stereotype that was on the front of the papers every day. And I did my job well. I played the game.