James Dean Quotes

"Only the gentle are ever really strong." "Gratification comes in the doing, not in the results." "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." "The damaged but beautiful soul of our time." - Andy Warhol "An actor must interpret life, and in order to do so must be willing to accept all the experiences life has to offer. In fact, he must seek out more of life than life puts at his feet. In the short span of his lifetime, an actor must learn all there is to know, experience all there is to experience, or approach that state as closely as possible. He must be superhuman in his efforts to store away in the core of his subconscious everything that he might be called upon to use in the expression of his art." "It was an accident, although I've been involved in some kind of theatrical function or other since I was a child - in school, music, athletics. To me, acting is the most logical way for people's neuroses to manifest themselves, in this great need we all have to express ourselves. To my way of thinking, an actor's course is set even before he's out of the cradle." "He would be bothered when someone would say he was mean and disrespectful. Because actually, he wasn't. They took silence to mean he cared little or nothing for them. They didn't have the insight, or didn't care to exercise the insight, in knowing that he was a shy boy that just didn't know how to approach them. Instead of making an attempt to approach him, they just, well, they just wrote him off." - Lew Bracker "To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty; to interpret it his problem; and to express it his dedication. Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. Being a good actor isn't easy. Being a man is even harder. I want to be both before I'm done." "Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known." - Dennis Hopper "Studying cows, pigs and chickens can help an actor develop his character. There are a lot of things I learned from animals. One was that they couldn't hiss or boo me. I also became close to nature, and am now able to appreciate the beauty with which this world is endowed." When told he was too short to be an actor: "How can you measure acting in inches?" "Trust and belief are two prime considerations. You must not allow yourself to be opinionated. You must say, 'Wait. Let me see.'And above all, you must be honest with yourself." - James Dean to Hedda Hopper "When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn't acting. It's following instructions. Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director's task is just that ^Ö to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over. And he must be allowed the space, the freedom to express himself in the role. Without that space, an actor is no more than an unthinking robot with a chest-full of push-buttons." "He was very afraid of being hurt. He was afraid of opening up in case it was turned around and used against him." - Elizabeth Taylor "He could look in a delicatessen window and suddenly start waving at a bowl of prunes, like they were alive. He was childish in a charming way." - Christine White "Jim Dean and Elvis were the spokesmen for an entire generation. When I was in acting school in New York, years ago, there was a saying that if Marlon Brando changed the way people acted, then James Dean changed the way people lived. He was the greatest actor who ever lived. He was simply a genius." - Martin Sheen "He didn't show you very much. He'd challenge you to find him. Then when you'd found him, he'd still make you guess. It was an endless game with him. The thing people missed about Jimmy was his mischievousness. He was the most constantly mischievous person I think I've ever met. Full of tricks, full of magic, full of outrageousness." - Stewart Stern "All of us were touched by Jimmy, and he was touched by greatness." - Natalie Wood "I didn't know what to do. How do you tell an eight-year-old boy his mother's going to die? I tried. In my own stumbling way I tried to prepare Jim for it. Nowadays, he lives in a world we don't understand too well, the actor's world. We don't see too much of him. But he's a good boy, my Jim. A good boy, and I'm very proud of him. Not easy to understand, no sir. He's not easy to understand. But he's all man, and he'll make his mark. Mind you, my boy will make his mark." - James Dean's father Winton in Modern Screen, August 1955 "It's a good thing [James] Dean died when he did. If he'd lived, he'd never have been able to live up to the publicity." -- Humphrey Bogart "I wish James Dean would never have died. Then he'd be fat and acting on 'Dynasty' or something. There wouldn't be this whiny-boy act that's so prevalent everywhere." -- Jane Leeves "A spooky, oddball, non-conformist, sullen and withdrawn, a member of the dirty shirt school of acting, a crazy mixed-up kid, a working eccentric and yes--a fourteen karat, ball-bearing genius." - - Mark Dayton, writer