I used to think then that I was Bohemian, but I know now that I am not. I prefer order and precision to untidiness and looseness.
From Conrad Veidt
Looking back across the years, so many pictures flash on the screen of my memory that just as I begin to see one clearly, another slides in, blotting out the first, itself to be pushed aside by the next and the next and the next.
My birth neither shook the German Empire nor caused much of an upheaval in the home. It pleased mother, caused father a certain amount of pride and my elder brother the usual fraternal jealousy of a hitherto only son.
It is my greatest joy to live a really good part, even though it imposes great strain. An artist is tired but proud when he has created a great work of art. So it is with the actor who really lives a great role and is proud of the part he played.
An actor remembers his first piece of published praise. It is written on his heart.
I have no illusions about my art. I am what the public made me and, consequently, I am not likely to forget my debt to them.
I think the motion picture industry is a stupid business and I despise acting the scenes in short snatches, one at a time. I hate this film work. I am disgusted with myself. On the stage I could never play a part unless I felt it with all my heart and soul.
I was appalled at the amount of study necessary in order to qualify in medicine, and gradually my desire was blunted by a keener - and secret - wish to become an actor.
It is precisely as though I were possessed by some other spirit when I enter on a new task of acting, as though something within me presses a switch and my own consciousness merges into some other, greater, more vital being.
My father died. It is still a deep regret to me this day that in choosing acting as my career I was forced to hurt him. He died too early to see I had done the right, the only thing.
2 perspectives
1 perspectives