Bela Lugosi Quotes

37 quotations by Bela Lugosi

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

Women have a predestination to suffering.

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

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

The stage is near and dear to me.

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.

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

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

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

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

My close-up was magnificent!

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.

Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting.

It was hell to go through what I went through. I didn't know I had so many friends. Many people gave a damn about my situation. They helped cure me.

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.

It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed on it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out-and come back for more.

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.

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

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

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

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

If you are not serious, people will sense it.

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

I've been using narcotics for 20 years.

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

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

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

I studied at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts for four years and emerged with a degree.

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

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

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.

I enjoy my work. I haven't been an actor for 30 years without getting pleasure out of the profession.

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

Death, the final, triumphant lover.

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

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.