I never had any desire to be a film actor. I never thought I was the good-looking movie type, which I assumed they wanted.
What would my parents think about America if they arrived here today? Would they even want to come? I wonder.
My mother, we were a very poor family. When I was a kid, we would be in our little room, and there would be a knock on the door almost every night with a hobo begging for food. Even though we didn’t even have enough to eat, my mother always found something to give them.
You know, you have to have some inner philosophy to deal with adversity.
I have always been grateful that my Russian mother and father came to this country to give me a better chance, and I have had a better chance.
I’m concerned that the world is a mess. That’s why when I wrote my last book, Let’s Face It, I dedicated it to the younger generation because, let’s face it, the world is in a mess. Right now, the young people will inherit that mess. I think we have to do everything we can.
If I can get enough signatures, to present an apology to slavery, I will present it to the President. The House of Representatives has already passed the resolution for the apology, but it has to pass the Senate. I think, in spite of all our problems, I think we’re in the right direction.
I have been trying to create a campaign to have our country make an apology for slavery, for the way that blacks were treated before the Civil War and after the Civil War.
I have a great respect for actors like Clint Eastwood, who’s a wonderful director. I think two pictures that I directed were not successful, so I decided not to make any more.
I never wanted to be in movies. In a sense, I’m still a failure because I wanted to be a star on the stage.
The first time I had got an offer to come to Hollywood, I turned it down. I said, ‘No, I’m an actor of the stage.’
Really a bad guy is more interesting, dramatically, than the good guy.
I’ve played some good guys as well, in Spartacus, Paths of Glory and my favorite picture, Lonely Are the Brave, so I had a mixture of parts in my life.
When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.
When you get old the worst thing is you lose so many friends. Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne. People who I loved to work with.
When you get to my age, you find that most of your dear friends are gone.
I directed two films, not very successfully, and after that, I went back to being an actor and a producer.
With John Wayne, we argued all the time and we made four pictures.
I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.
So they became superpatriots. And to prove themselves right-minded, they were more than willing to sacrifice the lives of others, even their fellow Jews. They were like the Vichy government in France, collaborators who held on to their influence and position at the expense of their fellow countrymen.
I believe much of the divisiveness in the world has been caused by religion, even in the time of Spartacus when they worshipped many gods. What is the purpose of religion? After ninety-five years on this planet, I have come to the conclusion that religion should be based on only one thing: helping your fellow man. If everybody followed that religion – helping his fellow man – armies would vanish overnight.