Gregory Peck Quotes

1. There are times when I could cheerfully walk out on the whole goddamn setup. I don't have to make pictures any more. When I first came out here to work from the New York stage, I was carved up in all directions, a dumb actor tied to a slew of contractual clauses. Today I'm my own man - free, off the hook. This is a collective business, I know. But now it's up to me to decide the stories we use and the kind of picture in which I'm prepared to get involved. I'm no longer the dumb and trusting ham being shuttled from picture to picture at someone else's whim. I'm a company boss who has to make big decisions right or wrong, responsible only to myself in the long run. For years we actors have been fighting for our so-called artistic freedom. We wanted to get rid of the moguls and their accountants. We damned the studio shylocks for their materialism and lack of taste. Now, most of us are on our own. So what happens? This morning I had to call my office and scrap a production on which people had been working for months…I decided it would be best to chuck it in rather than risk making a bad picture. All night I've been pacing up and down the house trying to make the right decision. I tell you there are times when I wish Hollywood actors had retained the status of bums and gypsies and left the planning to others. Right now, I'm tempted to say: "The hell with all of it". The picture has changed, my friend. The old omnipotent caliphs are dying fast. Television plus the weight of years has weakened the survivors. It will need energy and a fresh executive approach to redirect the creative drive, re-channel the talent. The monopolies of the studios have been broken. The anti-trust laws have severed their distribution outlets. The shackling of actors to loaded long-term contracts is virtually a thing of the past. In effect, I have complete control over what I do. A year of two back this was considered some kind of victory of art over tyranny. Now I'm not so sure. I'm a free soul, you remember. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be a writer. Freedom of mind and action is important to me. Right now I'd like to take off for Mexico and fish for a while and swim and read books without wondering whether they would make a good picture. Now I'll have to follow another production through from the drawing board to the cutting room. And then go out on the road and sell it with personal appearances. It can be stimulating. A challenge, as they say at Chasens. But there are times when actors like myself find themselves wishing we could resurrect Irving Thalberg and pass the ball to him or people like him. The town's wide open for any operator with the ability to finance, package and sell motion pictures.


2. If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.

3. I am a Roman Catholic. Not a fanatic, but I practice enough to keep the franchise. I don't always agree with the Pope…there are issues that concern me, like abortion, contraception, the ordination of women…and others. I think the Church should open up.




4. (on Robert Mitchum) I had given him the role and had paid him a terrific amount of money. It was obvious he had the better role. I thought he would understand that, but he apparently thought he acted me off the screen. I didn't think highly of him for that.

5. The only way to win a war is to be even nastier than the enemy.



6. I don't lecture and I don't grind any axes. I just want to entertain.

7. Marilyn Monroe may have been a bit of an extreme example, but she was given the best stories to suit her talents, she was stroked and cared for and treasured and treated like a little princess, treated as a valuable, talented person. What it was that led her to drink and take pills, I don't know. I don't think anyone can put it all together, but it's too easy to say that Hollywood wrung her out and exhausted her, strained her nerves and destroyed her. I think she'd have gone to pieces even sooner without the adulation and the care she received at the hands of her directors and producers and the big studios.

8. (when asked what he thought about the John Holmes porn trial) You know, someone once asked me that and I said the day that Laurence Olivier drops his pants on the screen is the day that I will support adult actors, and then I saw the movie "The Betsy".

9. (on what he thought about stars being paid $30 million per movie) I was born too soon!

10. Tough times don't last, tough people do, remember?

11. Do I think there's a glamorous male actor today? No way.

12. Robert Bork wants to be a Supreme Court justice. But the record shows he has a strange idea of what justice is. He defended poll taxes and literacy tests, which kept many Americans from voting. He opposed the civil rights law that ended "whites only" signs at lunch counters. He doesn't believe the Constitution protects your privacy. Please urge your senators to vote against the Bork nomination. Because, if Robert Bork wins a seat on the Supreme Court, it will be for life. His life...and yours.

13. (when he discovered that his second wife, French journalist Veronique Peck, had passed up an opportunity to interview Albert Schweitzer at a lunch hosted by Jean-Paul Sartre in order to go out on a date with Peck) You made the right choice, kiddo!

14. (on Frank Sinatra) Undeniably the title holder in the soft-touch department.

15. Faith is a force, a powerful force. To me, it's been like an anchor to windward - something that's seen me through troubled times and some personal tragedies and also through the good times and success and the happy times.

16. One good thing about the bad movies is that people don't remember them. Nobody ever comes up to me and says: "I hated you in "I Walk the Line"!".

17. (on Audrey Hepburn) There is no doubt that the princess did become a queen - not only on the screen. One of the most loved, one of the most skillful, one of the most intelligent, one of the most sensitive, charming actresses - and friends, in my life - but also in the later stages of her life, the UNICEF ambassador to the children of the world. The generosity, sensitivity, the nobility of her service to the children of the world and the mothers of the world will never be forgotten.

18. My feeling about him is that the America that we have today, the freedoms we enjoy and the privileges we have, are really the reflection of Abe Lincoln's convictions, his vision, and his toughness.




19. I enjoy practicing my craft as well as I possibly can. I enjoy the work for its own sake.

20. on meeting Pope John Paul II at the White House in 1978) He impressed me more than any other man I've ever met, and I've met a lot. My wife and I happened to be seated on one of the aisles, and the Pope came right down and he saw me and smiled. The smile was genuine, not a politician smile, the practiced smile. He shook hands with me and went on. And then (US President Jimmy Carter) said: "Hello, Gregory, what are you doing here?" and I said: "Well, Mr. President, you invited me". He said: "Just a minute" - and damned if he didn't run after the Pope, grabbing him by the arm and pulled him back. He said: "Your Excellency, this is one of our best-known, most beloved American film actors". And he looked at me, ah! There was a glimmer as if somehow he must have seen me in a movie. His eyes widened and he took me in his arms. And he sort of grabbed me by the elbow and said: "God bless you, Gregory. God bless you in your mission". And he went on.

21. If these Mount Everests of the financial world are going to labor and bring forth still more pictures with people being blown to bits with bazookas and automatic assault rifles with no gory detail left unexploited, if they are going to encourage anxious, ambitious actors, directors, writers and producers to continue their assault on the English language by reducing the vocabularies of their characters to half a dozen words, with one colorful but overused Anglo-Saxon verb and one unbeautiful Anglo-Saxon noun covering just about every situation, then I would like to suggest that they stop and think about this: making millions is not the whole ball game, fellows. Pride of workmanship is worth more. Artistry is worth more.

22. I had that stubborn streak, the Irish in me I guess.






23. (on "Gentleman's Agreement") We felt we were brave pioneers exploring anti-Semitism in the United States - today, it seems a little dated.

24. (on his 1962 Oscar-winning role in "To Kill a Mockingbird") I put everything I had into it - all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.

25. (on "The Boys from Brazil") I felt, Laurence Olivier felt, friends of mine like Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon felt, that I was good in this part. Some critics seem unwilling to accept actors when they break what they think is the mold or the image.





26. I put everything I had into it - all my feelings and everything I'd learned in 46 years of living, about family life and fathers and children. And my feelings about racial justice and inequality and opportunity.

27. Inside of all the makeup and the character and makeup, it's you, and I think that's what the audience is really interested in… you, how you're going to cope with the situation, the obstacles, the troubles that the writer put in front of you.

28. I think I should have been more ferocious in pursuit of the whale, more cruel to the crew, and I think I'd have a better grasp now of what Melville was talking about. Ahab focused all his energies on avenging himself against the whale, but he was trying to penetrate the mystery of why we are here at all, why there is anything. I wasn't mad enough, not crazy enough, not obsessive enough. I should have done more...At the time, I didn't have more in me. 

29. I've had my ups and downs. There have been times when I wanted to quit. Times when I hit the bottle. Marital problems. I've touched most of the bases.




30. I don't think I could stay interested for a couple of months in a character of mean motivation.

31. They say the bad guys are more interesting to play but there is more to it than that - playing the good guys is more challenging because it's harder to make them interesting.




32. Of the movies I've done, there isn't much I really like. "The Gunfighter", "Roman Holiday", "Twelve O'Clock High" I feel were my best.

33. I'm not a do-gooder. It embarrassed me to be classified as a humanitarian. I simply take part in activities that I believe in.

34. (on James Cagney) Now, you take a great cinema actor, in my opinion, James Cagney. He went very far. He was very theatrical, very intense, and yet always believable. He riveted the audience's attention. His acting advice was: "Believe what you say - say what you believe." And that says it, really.



35. That's why those fellas were so magnificent playing the same part, because they'd played it forty times. That's why John Wayne finally became a good actor in "True Grit" - he's got 150 of them behind him. Now he's developed a saltiness and an earthiness and a humor and a subtlety that comes from mining that same vein over and over again.

36. I can honestly say that in twenty years of making movies I never had a part that came close to being the real me until "Atticus Finch".




37. Entertainment is all right, but entertainment with an idea behind it is much more important.

38. I just do things I really enjoy. I enjoy acting. When I'm driving to the studio, I sing in the car. I love my work and my wife and my kids and my friends. And I think: "You're a lucky man, Gregory Peck, a damn lucky man."

39. I hold no brief for Communists, but I believe in and will defend their right to act independently within the law. I question whether members of the committee are interested in defending our form of government or whether they are attempting to suppress political opinion at odds with their own. 



40. I would give up everything I do and everything I have if I could make a significant difference in getting the nuclear arms race reversed. It is the number-one priority in my life. My work was the main thing in my life for a long time; now I'm beginning to think a little more about what the future will hold and what kind of world my kids will live in.

41. I never liked the name Eldred. Since nobody knew me in New York, I just changed to my middle name.




42. Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life.

43. Gregory Peck is the hottest thing in town. Some say he is a second Gary Cooper. Actually, he is the first Gregory Peck.

44. I realize now how very short life is, because I've got to be considered to be in the home stretch. But I won't waste time on recriminations and regrets. And the same goes for my shortcomings and my own failures.

45. What did I do in high school? I grew from 5 feet 4 inches to 6 feet 2 inches.

46. (on gay rights) It just seems silly to me that something so right and simple has to be fought for at all.

47. There we were, hundreds of us lined up, waving at the great man as he tipped his hat to us. And that is the extent of my acquaintance with Albert Einstein.





48. Every script I'm offered has Cary Grant's paw prints on it.

49. You have to dream, you have to have a vision, and you have to set a goal for yourself that might even scare you a little because sometimes that seems far beyond your reach. Then I think you have to develop a kind of resistance to rejection, and to the disappointments that are sure to come your way.


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