Sammy Cahn Quotes

I began as a model, but that did not really hold my interest for too long! I believe I stood out from the parade of models trying to make it in Hollywood, which helped launch my career beyond the one-night-stand horror movie.

My favourite performances are by actresses like Bette Davis in 'All About Eve' or Gena Rowlands in pretty much anything - performances that have nothing to do with age.

To me, looking glamorous on screen has never been about skin show.

I think all good actors are personalities. If they're not, they're not stars. What makes you a star is horsepower.

One thing I've noticed is that I can tell when a young actor or a young actress is going to become a huge star. Everybody else will say, "Oh come on, Michelle Pfeiffer, are you kidding?" and I'm pretty much always right about that.

That was Robert Aldrich. And that [Emperor Of The North] was one of the only times I actually got a part in a movie in the conventional way: The role was there, I auditioned, I auditioned again, and then I actually did a full-fledged screen test, which they shot on a soundstage on the lot at 20th Century Fox. They put up a set, and Robert Aldrich actually directed me in this screen test.

I saw Cara Delevingne like five, six times. And I was never talking about the film [Valerian]. And then at the end, I say okay, let's do some test. She says yeah, yeah, good. So I took her in the room, and I test her for like six hours non-stop. Exercise, exercise, exercise for six hours. It was actually funny. And then I knew at the end of the six hours.

I have always loved Ed Norton and Ryan Gosling. Also Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett.

I'd never studied film. I had movies that I loved and movie stars that I looked up to, but I really had not seen a lot of the great classic films that he felt like he wanted me to see before I took on such a huge role.

And what movies we saw! All the actors and actresses whose photographs I collected, with their look of eternity! Their radiance, their eyes, their faces, their voices, the suavity of their movements! Their clothes! Even in prison movies, the stars shone in their prison clothes as if tailors had accompanied them in their downfall.

Dude, you're such a geek. And that's coming from an overweight Star Trek fan who scored a 5 on the AP Calculus test. So you know your condition is grave

No one but Gene Tierney could have played 'Laura.' There was no other actress around with her particular combination of beauty, breeding, and mystery.

He's quite extraordinary with his moves and spins. I think he was a baton girl in a past life [on his co-star Hayden Christensen].

Elizabeth Taylor is, in my opinion, the greatest actress in film history. She instinctively understands the camera and its nonverbal intimacies. Opening her violet eyes, she takes us into the liquid realm of emotion, which she inhabits by Pisces intuition. Richard Burton said that Taylor showed him how to act for the camera. Economy and understatement are essential. At her best, Elizabeth Taylor simply is. An electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extra-sensory, pagan phenomenon.

I would be really excellent in a horror film because I have a great scream. I'd be really good in a comedy too. I'm top, top, top quality.

After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled: “She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!”

Bette Davis taught Hollywood to follow an actress instead of the actress following the camera, and she's probably the best movie actress there's ever been.

There are actors that are really fine actors but not good auditioners. There are really good auditioners that may not be great actors. There are great actors that are really good auditioners, too. I happen to be someone who's not a great auditioner, but usually on a set can hold my own.

It's not unlike the movies for human actors. Once a dog stars in a movie, they don't work very much anymore. It's kind of heartbreaking.

I know of few actresses who have this incredible talent for communicating with a camera lens. She would try to seduce a camera as if it were a human being.

My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen.

Bill Murray I always liked. I'm not as good as him, but there's a quality in him that I like. And then there's DeNiro, I'll never be that.

A lot of what is famous about film making are the movie stars and what is considered a movie star is a lot of great acting, but also a lot of physical beauty.

Dustin Hoffman said this one time, that if he hadn't made it as a film star, he would still be happy as a character actor because he was a character actor because of his face from day one, so he would always work in the theater.