Tony Curtis
I'm world famous, everywhere I go there are people who love me because of I've been able to bring them some joy from the movies I've made.Collection: Famous
I've made 122 movies, and I daresay there's a picture of mine showing somewhere in the world every day.Collection: Movies
They gave me away as a prize once - a Win Tony Curtis For A Weekend competition. The woman who won was disappointed. She'd hoped for second prize - a new stove.
Like an opera singer, I am able to sing out my song in paint.
I wouldn't be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife.
If you know how to live in Vegas you can have the best time.
I don't know what organically grown chickens are; I've never seen one.
I was born in and worked in a period that could be called enviable.
Every movie I've been in has ended up on television.
It's such a human condition, whether you're a great track star or a great knitting person or you paint watercolors - someone knows who you are.
I enjoy being recognized whatever environment I'm in.
It is for the latter that I always wanted to be an actor: to play characters who are always on the move.
I will always remember this summer day in Paris, when I was to perform a great acrobatic move. I can still see myself stepping on the ring of a packed circus along real performers.
While you're doing it, you don't really know what you're doing.
I want the public to know that it will be an honor for me to meet them and spend a few special moments with all those who helped me through my filmed career.
Painting is much more than therapy to me its a way of life.
Its not age as much as the experiences I have had.
I used to be good friends with my depression, saying oh I'm so depressed, or life is terrible.
I look at everything in an artistic way.
Even on a personal note, my dressing table downstairs is crowded with things, like a mini landscape. It's a city with buildings and towers and roads. There's a pool and a little park. When I move something around it becomes a different tableau.
But where there is no art show, I would still be painting.
I've just opened a show in Florida, although I also have many pieces on display around the world.
For instance, I always have one hanging in Budapest in the mayors office.
Everywhere I go in the world, people know me and recognise me and really show affection for me.
The movie business is very twisted, out of site, out of mind, you know.
Yes I'm still working, but my life's no longer filled with it.
I can't sit around and wait for the telephone to ring.
But my longevity is due to my good timing.
I like Vegas for its spontaneity.
I enlisted when I was a boy. The Navy looked after me like my mother. It fed me, took care of me and gave me wonderful opportunities.
At 17, I dreamed of seeing the world. At 19, I had been around the world and back.
I joined the Navy hoping to be submariner and ended up in the sub service aboard a tender in the Pacific.
The service meant so much to me. You don't know privileged I feel and how lucky I am to have served.
The government gave me enough money to go to acting school.
I've been in the movies for 50 years, I've made 130 some-odd movies.
Now I'm a painter. That was another opportunity I was able to pursue, I've been painting all my life, now it's become a second career because of my success in the movies.
My whole world before I joined the Navy was my neighborhood in the Bronx.
We often don't think of them, we think of the great wars and the great battles, but what about losing a son or a daughter, or a girl losing her husband or vice versa? I think of the people who never got the chance to have the opportunities I had.
I've always believed that service to others is rent we pay for our time on this planet.Collection: Pay
Every line, everything you do in life, should have a motive and a reason. Every one of us should have a motive and a reason, most of the time, to accomplish all the things that we want in life.Collection: Reason
If you don't know your gift, you've got no lift.Collection: Lifts
You wanna know the secret of life? The saliva of young girls.Collection: Life
Acting is something that we all practice at some time in our lives. We're different people to our mothers, fathers, our friends, people that we hung out together with, people that didn't like us or we didn't like them. We readjust ourselves.Collection: Mother
Someone said to me, "Hey, what's it like kissing Marilyn Monroe?" I said, "It's like kissing Hitler. What are you doing asking me such a stupid question?"Collection: Stupid
Women are beginning to lose their identity. They have jumped with teeth clenched, fists braced and eyes aglow, into the competitive man's world. They're losing the vibrant quality of femininity, the aura of mystery.Collection: Eye
Marilyn Monro wasn't the brightest person in the world - that didn't make a difference one way or the other - but she was giving and kind. And that's what got her in trouble. She was so giving and kind to all of these people she met that she found herself doing these things that she didn't want to do.Collection: People
I was a handsome boy, a very handsome young man, bright blue eyes, mmm. I would make trucks skid off the road. Anyway, girls were never a problem; the problem was me. But a lot of guys didn't like me because I made it look so easy, but it wasn't easy for me or anybody. When you're 24, it's not easy. You haven't reached anywhere that you want to be, so my looks helped me get in the movies, and I'm privileged that my parents came up with what I look like. What they did I'll never know and I don't care.Collection: Girl
Jack Lemmon is my best friend and he's a very wonderful actor. A very talented, very funny man. A lovely man. We're like brothers! We are gifts to each other. He's such a fun personality. There will only ever be one Jack Lemmon.Collection: Brother
My parents were Hungarian immigrants; my father was a tailor and we lived in the back of a tailor store. And that was my first inkling of what it was like to be raised in America. It had a profound effect on me - I saw different people coming in all the time with different attitudes and I liked it. And as I grew older, I found that I was able to use something inside of me to get some sympathy if I wanted it. I used to shine shoes, and I would use a waif-like look. I'd get a dime and I'd be as happy as could be.Collection: Attitude
I feel strongly that we, all of us, are brothers and sisters, and nothing interferes with that except our education, our background, where we grew up and how we should do it. If you eliminated all those negatives and gave us an open view of what life would be like, it would be different.Collection: Brother