Jack Klugman Quotes

Poverty can teach lessons that privilege cannot.

I was at the pinnacle of my career one day and the next day I was put out to pasture. I felt like a race horse with a broken leg.

I saw John Garfield smoke. He was my idol, so I smoked. I even smoked like him.

I always loved to gamble. I never got close to a horse. Fate dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time out. I thought how easy this is. Now I love being around them.

I love the theater. I love the rehearsals. That's where you build a performance. That's your foundation. If you're gonna build a house, you start with the foundation. That makes the house strong. That's the way I build a character, from the foundation out.

I know know why ... if something not broke, don't fix it. Twelve Angry Men was the perfect movie. The cast was just the best cast you could possibly get together. The director was Sidney Lumet, the best director around. So why they made the remake I don't know.

I'm 83 and a half years old and I feel fine. I feel like a teenager but I'm unable to do a lot of the things that I used to do but I enjoy life to the fullest.

We learned out craft. Acting is a craft and you must learn it. I see a lot of talent today in the kids but they don't know how to work. They don't know the craft of acting and you can only get that on the stage in theater. You cannot learn how to act in movies or in television.

There was no sacrifice in acting for me, even when I was starving in New York. I went three days without eating. Charlie Bronson and I sold blood for $5 so that we could eat.

Time is very important to art and if you don't have the time to select, art goes out the window.

I was happy because I was acting. Most of the time for nothing. But I was learning and to learn that you can learn opens up the world for you.

Fred Silverman, the head of ABC, he offered me a lot of comedy series but I told him I'd already been the best comedy series around, "The Odd Couple," and so when he saw that I did Quincy he called my agent and said, Jack turns me down? All my good series and he ends up playing an undertaker." And this was the HEAD of ABC series.

A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize.

We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80.

I love the theater because I love the live audience and when we went three cameras we have a live audience in the study so we had someone to play to and react to. That laughter.

Walter Matthau made all the big money and he was wonderful as Oscar Madison on the stage. You couldn't beat him. I know because I replaced him on Broadway. He was just delightful.

Acting became my best friend. When I auditioned to get into college, the teacher said you belong here, Mr. Klugman, and to hear that word belong - I never belonged anywhere before - and suddenly I belonged in acting and it was so comfortable and I loved it.

The only tool we have as artists is selectivity. If you're a painter, you select the color, the lines, how severe they should be. As an actor you develop how angry you should be. You select how angry you should be. You listen to the other actor and then you react. In film, sometimes the other actor isn't even there. You have to play the scene. What I do is I call on my experience on the stage. I play the scene and I hope that I reach a certain level of integrity because that's what I learned on the stage.

Now I have the voice of a 16-year-old. I'm looking for a doctor who could give me the body of a 16-year-old.

Suddenly it was gone. I'd lost more than my voice and my career. I'd lost my best friend.

Some days when I start to talk, my voice isnt strong. But then it warms up.

For 50 years, acting was the reason I got up in the morning.