In order to be totally spontaneous, you can't be too obsessed with accuracy, but if you're inaccurate in a drawing, it will look fake, and when you act, it will sound fake. You have to find miraculously some proper balance between the two, but there's no formula.
I'm not an ace at small talk.
Children ran up to me shouting, 'Columbo!' At first, it gave me great pleasure, but later, I said to myself that those children should have had their own heroes instead of admiring a cop from Los Angeles.
The first time I ever spoke to John Cassavetes was at a Lakers game. I got up to go for a hot dog, and he was coming in the opposite direction. I don't know who said hello first, but we started talking, and it turned out that he went to high school with my first wife, Alice.
I do figure every angle of a guy I'm acting - but not consciously 'til afterward.
You think you're in another civilization, another time, and then you see antennas coming out of these hovels, and your mouth falls open when you see the descendants of the Incas shouting 'Columbo! Columbo!'
Initially, they wanted Columbo to wear a driving coat. I said: 'Are you kidding? He's not an English aristocrat.'
I remember being amazed that actors had a union. I thought only coal miners had unions, or guys that worked in automobile plants. That's an indication of how naive I was.
I think people identify with Columbo because he is an average man.
To be totally sincere, I'd surely be a better actor today if I hadn't played Columbo all these years.
I've been there a thousand years, and I never felt comfortable. Beverly Hills - when I first saw it, I thought they put it up this morning. You got to pack water to get to the drugstore.
When I was a kid, the idea of gettin' paid to paint your face... listen, I grew up in Ossining, New York, a nice little town by the Hudson, and nothin' ever interested me except being your usual high school big shot, which I was an' loved it, played all the sports and goofed around, always out on the street with the guys, everything was funny t'me.
In the theater, you didn't have any marks. Your instincts in rehearsal told you what the blocking was. On film, they reversed it. They decided ahead of time what your instincts were, before you even arrived.
I'm old fashioned. I really think you should know how to draw before you start painting. I use charcoal and graphite; I put a skylight in. In my house, I turned the garage into an art studio. So I'm awash in art studios.
They wouldn't take me in the navy because of my glass eye. So I joined the merchant navy, who allowed monocular crew if you worked in the kitchens. You're not wanted on deck or in the engine room with one eye, but you're good to fire up the ovens and cook hundreds of chops.
What wouldn't have happened to me if I hadn't ended up in Hartford, Connecticut.
I got a regret: That I started acting so late. I was 27, and guys who start at 18 or so, there's this kinda continuity of friendships they form in the profession by startin' young, I've never had that.
It helps an actor an awful lot when he looks like the part. There's nothing more disconcerting, that makes you more anxious or more insecure, than when you don't look like who you're supposed to be.
I'm makin' a lotta dough, everyone knows who you are, and who the hell cares whether you're typecast or not? Also, there's something wrong with complaining about being typecast in something you really enjoy doing.
I was a street-guy villain. I was a street-corner villain. I was an illiterate villain. All rough edges.
