Cary Grant Quotes

1. My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.


2. Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.

3. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.

4. I think that making love is the best form of exercise.

5. Ah, beware of snobbery; it is the unwelcome recognition of one's own past failings.

6. To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you're impotent. She can't wait to disprove it.

7. Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.

8. When people tell you how young you look, they are telling you how old you are.

9. We have our factory, which is called a stage. We make a product, we color it, we title it and we ship it out in cans.

10. I improve on misquotation.

11. Divorce is a game played by lawyers.

12. Do your job and demand your compensation - but in that order.

13. My father used to say: "Let them see you and not the suit. That should be secondary."

14. It's important to know where you've come from so that you can know where you're going. I probably chose my profession because I was seeking approval, adulation, admiration and affection.

15. It seems that each new marriage is more difficult to survive than the last one. I'm rather a fool for punishment - I keep going back for more, don't ask me why.

16. I have nothing against gays, I'm just not one myself.

17. My intention in taking LSD was to make myself happy. A man would be a fool to take something that didn't make him happy. I took it with a group of men, one of whom was Aldus Huxley. We deceived ourselves by calling it therapy, but we were truly interested in how this chemical could help humanity. I found it a very enlightening experience, but it's like alcohol in one respect: a shot of brandy can save your life, but a bottle of brandy can kill you.

18. If I had known then what I know now, if I had not been so utterly stupid, I would have had a hundred children and I would have built a ranch to keep them on.

19. A reporter in search of information wired Grant's agent: "HOW OLD CARY GRANT?" Grant happened to read the message himself and wired back "OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?"

20. (Talking about Burt Reynolds): As well as being my, and the world's favorite light comedian, Burt is a very considerate and thoughtful man.

21. The only really good thing about acting is that there's no heavy lifting.

22. 1970 Honorary Oscar acceptance speech: You know that I may never look at this without remembering the quiet patience of directors who were so kind to me, who were kind enough to put up with me more than once, some of them even three or four times. I trust they and all the other directors, writers and producers and my leading women have forgiven me for what I didn't know. You know that I've never been a joiner or a member of any particular social set, but I've been privileged to be a part of Hollywood's most glorious era.

23. I've often been accused by critics of being myself on-screen. But being oneself is more difficult than you'd suppose.

24. I know they nicknamed us "Cash and Cary," but I never asked Barbara Hutton for a penny. I never married a woman for money, that's the God's truth. I may not have married for very sound reasons, but money was the least of them.

25. (Charlie) Chaplin is waiting a long time at a trolley car stop. He's the first in line of what turns out to be a huge crowd. The trolley finally arrives, he's the first one on, but then the crowd behind him surges through the door and pushes him right through the door on the other side. And that's a lot like what Hollywood is like. When you're a young man, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. is driving. Wally Beery is the conductor, and Chaplin's got a front row seat. You take your seat, and back behind you is Gary Cooper. He has got his long feet stuck out in front of one of the exit doors, and people keep tripping over him and onto the street. Suddenly a young man named Ty Power gets on. He asks you to move over. You make a picture with Joan Fontaine. You think you do a good job, but she wins the Oscar, and you get nothing. And pretty soon more and more people get on, it's getting very crowded, and then you decide to get off. When you get off the trolley, you notice that it's been doing nothing but going around in circles. It doesn't go anywhere. You see the same things over and over. So you might as well get off.

26. On Katharine Hepburn: She was this slip of a women and I never liked skinny women. But she had this thing, this air you might call it, the most totally magnetic women I'd ever seen, and probably ever seen since. You had to look at her, you had to listen to her, there was no escaping her.

27. Everyone tells me I've had such an interesting life, but sometimes I think it's been nothing but stomach disturbances and self-concern.

28. I'd like to have made one of those big splashy Technicolor musicals with Rita Hayworth.

29. I have no plans to write an autobiography, I will leave that to others. I'm sure they will turn me into a homosexual or a Nazi spy or something else. (1981)

30. For more than thirty years of my life I had smoked with increasing habit. I was finally separated from the addiction by Betsy, who, after carefully studying hypnosis, practiced it, with my full permission and trust, as I was going off to sleep one night. She sat in a chair near the bed and, in a quiet, calm voice, rhythmically repeated what I inwardly knew to be true, the fact that smoking was not good for me; and, as my conscious mind relaxed and no longer cared to offer a negative thought, her words sank into my subconscious; and the following day, to my surprise I had no need or wish to smoke. Nor have I smoked since. Nor have I, as far as I know, replaced it with any other harmful habit.

31. The secret of comedy is doing it naturally under the most difficult circumstances. And film comedy is the most difficult of all. At least on stage you know right away if you're getting laughs or not. But making a movie, you have no way of knowing. So you try to time the thing for space and length and can only hope when it plays in the movie theaters months later that you have timed the thing right. It's difficult and it takes experience. I'll always remember the great actor, A.E. Matthews, who said on his death bed: "Dying's tough - but not as tough as comedy."

32. Actors today try to avoid comedy because if you write a comedy that's not a success, the lack of success is immediately apparent because the audience is not laughing. A comedy is a big risk. This is a tremendously costly business and to put money into a picture that might not come off - oh, that's pretty risky.

33. It takes 500 small details to add up to one favorable impression.

34. I tell you, in films, one doesn't really meet the audience. You don't get the impact or spirit of your audience, whereas when you are out in the public, you do.

35. I don't like to see men of my age making love on the screen. Being a father will make me more free than I have ever been. It will be a great experience. I can't wait. (1965)

36. I have spent the greater part of my life fluctuating between Archie Leach and Cary Grant, unsure of each, suspecting each.

37. There is no doubt I am aging. My format of comedy is still the same as ever. I gravitate toward scripts that put me in an untenable position. Then the rest of the picture is spent in trying to squirm out of it. Naturally, I always get the girl in the end. It may appear old-fashioned. There seems to be a trend toward satirical comedy, like The Apartment (1960). Perhaps it is because young writers today feel satirical living in a world that seems headed for destruction. (1961)

38. Mostly, we have manufactured ladies - with the exception of Ingrid, Grace, Deborah and Audrey.

39. I can't portray Bing Crosby, I'm Cary Grant. I'm myself in that role. The most difficult thing is to be yourself - especially when you know it's going to be seen immediately by 300 million people.

40. (on Irene Dunne) Her timing was marvelous. She was so good that she made comedy look easy. If she'd made it look as difficult as it really is, she would have won her Oscar.

41. (on Betsy Drake) Betsy was a delightful comedienne, but I don't think Hollywood was ever really her milieu. She wanted to help humanity, to help others help themselves.

42. There are only seven movie stars in the world whose name alone will induce American bankers to lend money for movie productions, and the only woman on the list is Ingrid Bergman.

43. Chaplin has given great pleasure to millions of people, and I hope he returns to Hollywood. Personally, I don't think he is a Communist, but whatever his political affiliations, they are secondary to the fact that he is a great entertainer. We should not go off the deep end.

44. This, I love. I enjoy talking back and forth to people. You know, otherwise, I wouldn't get to meet the people.

45. A reporter once asked him: "Who is Cary Grant? He replied: "When you find out, tell me."

46. And there I suddenly found my articulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor?

47. I know that, all my life, I've been going around in a fog. You're just a bunch of molecules until you know who you are. You spend your time getting to be a big Hollywood actor. But then what? You've reached a comfortable plateau, and you want to stay on it; you resist change. One day, after many weeks of LSD, my last defense crumbled. To my delight, I found I had a tough inner core of strength. In my youth, I was very dependent upon older men and women. Now people come to me for help!

48. Why don't you invent some hot diamonds?

49. On his mother: When I go to see her, the minute I get there I start clearing my throat.

50. If you want to be an actor, my advice is to learn your lines and don't bump into the other actors.

51. Autographs are ridiculous. When I sign one, it starts of a chain reaction. I'm not able to do anything else for the rest of the day.





52. I took LSD with the hope it would make me feel better about myself. I wanted to rid myself of all my hypocrisies....

53. There is a great misconception about LSD and a great deal to explain.....I used it about 100 times before it became illegal.

54. On his retirement from acting: I got tired of getting up at six o'clock and tripping over all those cables and drinking out of Styrofoam cups. It's not as glamorous as you might think.

55. On his daughter: Jennifer is the best production I ever made.

56. There's no point in being unhappy about growing older. Just think of the millions who have been denied the privilege.







57. On dying: I often wonder how I am going to do it. Do you ever wonder whether you are going to embarrass someone or do it in your sleep?

58. On dying: I would have thought that medical science would have had the problem of death all sorted out. I was sure that by the time I reached the age I am now, they would have found a cure for it, that they would be able to transplant everything and we'd all just keep right on going forever.

59. On women and marriage: You marry them and they've got you. You have a child with them, and then it's completely over.

60. On women and marriage: Most women are instinctively wiser and emotionally more mature than men. They know our insecurities. A man rushes about trying to prove himself. It takes him much longer to feel comfortable about getting married.

61. On his autobiography: I'm too busy living my life to write about it.

62. On unauthorized biographies: I don't care what they're saying. I've developed a skin like a rhino's.

63. On unauthorized biographies: They all repeat rumors that I'm a tightwad and that I'm homosexual. Now I don't feel either of those is an insult, but it is all nonsense.

64. I can't make a speech. I am a rotten speech maker. Making speeches has never been my forte......not even my fifty or sixty or seventy.



65. Virginia Cherrill (wife): "My possessiveness and fear of losing her brought about the very condition I feared: the loss of her."

66. Barbara Hutton (wife): "She wasn't cold to me. She was a lovely woman who suffered unjustly at the hands of the press. It was not her fault that she was born rich."

67. Betsy Drake (wife): "I owe a lot to Betsy."

68. Barbara Harris (wife): "Pretty good for an old geezer like me, isn't she?"

69. On his marriage failures: They all left me. I didn't leave any of them. They all walked out on me.......maybe they just got bored.

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