The first time I had got an offer to come to Hollywood, I turned it down. I said, "No, I'm an actor of the stage.

I never had any desire to be a film actor. I never thought I was the good-looking movie type, which I assumed they wanted.

When you get to my age, you find that most of your dear friends are gone.

I went to Hollywood to test for Martha Ivers and I thought I was going to play the part that Van Heflin played.But they wanted me to play the part of Barbara Stanwyck's husband, so I played that. Then when I finished the movie, I went back to Broadway and did another flop.

On a crowded bus in Israel, a mother was speaking to her son in Yiddish. An Israeli woman reprimanded her. "You should be speaking Hebrew. Why are you talking to him in Yiddish?" The mother answered, "I don't want he should forget he's a Jew."

When I produced Spartacus, the writer was Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in jail because he would not answer McCarthy's questions about other people. He submitted the picture under the false name of Sam Jackson.

My mother once said, "A beggar must always give to another beggar that's worse off than he is." That has always stuck with me.