Bela Lugosi Quotes

The former ruling class kept the community of actors in ignorance by means of various lies.

Without movie parts I was reduced to freak status. I just couldn't stand it.

That is different, to have someone think that I am evil when I really am not.

Actors were exploited no less by the capitalist managers than they were by the state.

I'll be truthful. The weekly paycheck is the most important thing to me.

Death, the final, triumphant lover.

I have played Dracula a thousand times on stage and I find I have become thoroughly settled in the technique of the stage and not of the screen.

Every actor's greatest ambition is to create his own, definite and original role, a character with which he will always be identified. In my case, that role was Dracula.

Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting.

I will not be tortured! I tear torture out of myself by torturing you!

The screen magnifies everything, even the way you are thinking.

The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.

The vampire was a complete change from the usual romantic characters I was playing, but it was a success.

Every actor is somewhat mad, or else he'd be a plumber or a bookkeeper or a salesman.

Women have a predestination to suffering.

I'd like to quit the supernatural roles and play just an interesting, down-to-earth person.

I have never met a vampire personally, but I don't know what might happen tomorrow.

Supernatural perhaps...baloney, perhaps not!

The role seemed to demand that I keep myself worked up to fever pitch, so I took on the actual attributes of the horrible vampire, Dracula.

There was no male vampire type in existence. Someone suggested an actor of the Continental School who could play any type, and mentioned me.

If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.

I look in the mirror and say to myself, Can it be you once played Romeo?

You can't make people believe in you if you play a horror part with your tongue in your cheek.

A screen actor is compensated in the knowledge that millions will see his performance at one time, where only hundreds will see it on the stage.

Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy.

In making theories, always keep a window open so that you can throw one out if necessary.

Circumstances made me the theatrical personality I am, which many people believe is also a part of my personal life.

I never drink... wine.

People, chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging to certainties... they live like ants.

It took several years of hard work in small roles before I attained stardom.

It took me years to live down Dracula and convince the film producers that I would play almost any other type of role.

If you are not serious, people will sense it.

I'll take any story if it's good.

My body grew hot, then cold. I tried to eat the bed sheets. My heart beat madly. Every joint in my body ached. When I took the cure they took it all away from me.

I never play without my cape.

In Hungary, acting is a profession. In America, it is a decision.

The stage is near and dear to me.

To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.

The love-bite, it is the beginning. You will be irresistible.

When a film company is in the red they come to me. Always it is the same.

I don't have a dime left. I am dependent on my friends for food and a small old-age pension.

I have lived too completely. I think I have known every human emotion.

To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious.

It is women who bear the race in bloody agony. Suffering is a kind of horror. Blood is a kind of horror. Women are born with horror in their very bloodstream. It is a biological thing.

I've been using narcotics for 20 years.

In the studio the director controls the actor's every move, every inflection, every expression.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf. I don't say I don't like people at all, but, to tell you the truth, I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds.