Best quotes by Jack Lemmon

Jack Lemmon

Jack Lemmon

American actor

John Uhler Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001), commonly known as Jack Lemmon, was an American actor. Equally proficient in both dramatic and comic roles, Lemmon was known for his anxious, middle-class everyman screen persona in dramedy pictures, leading The Guardian to coin him "the most successful tragi-comedian of his age."

He starred in over sixty films and was nominated for an Academy Award eight times, winning twice, and among many other accolades, including six Golden Globe Awards (counting the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award), three BAFTA Awards, and two Emmy Awards. In 1988, he was awarded the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the American cinema.

His best known films include Mister Roberts (1955, for which he won the year's Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), Irma la Douce (1963), The Great Race (1965), Save the Tiger (1973, for which he won Best Actor), The China Syndrome (1979), Missing (1982), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). He also acted in several Broadway plays, earning Tony Award nominations for Tribute and the 1986 revival of Long Day's Journey into Night.

Lemmon had a fruitful collaboration with actor and real-life friend Walter Matthau, which The New York Times called "one of Hollywood's most successful pairings," that spanned ten films between 1966 and 1998; The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Odd Couple (1968) and its sequel The Odd Couple II (1998), The Front Page (1974), Buddy Buddy (1981), JFK (1991), Grumpy Old Men (1993) and its sequel Grumpier Old Men (1995), The Grass Harp (1995), and Out to Sea (1997).

All quotes by Jack Lemmon:

No matter how successful you get, always send the elevator back down.

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day.

Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

Anything truly worthwhile does not come easy. If it did, it would not be all that worthwhile.

Success is always somebody else's opinion of you; but it doesn't amount to a damn compared to your own opinion of yourself.

If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball.

Dying is not a sin. Not living is.

I have lost someone I loved as a brother, as a closest friend, and a remarkable human being. We have also lost one of the best damn actors we'll ever see.

If you've been fortunate enough to live out your dream in the profession of your choice, then you have an obligation to send the elevator back down.

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

Acting doesn't have anything to do with listening to the words. We never really listen, in general conversation, to what the other person is saying. We listen to what they mean. And what they mean is often quite apart from the words. When you see a scene between two actors that goes really well you can be sure they're not listening to each other - they're feeling what the other person is trying to get at. Know what I mean?

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

Everything that is truly worthwhile - I think passion is involved in your approach to it. No matter what it is.

How do you know that God didn't speak to Charles Darwin?

My career has been full of remarkable coincidences that have nothing to do with me.

Part of an actor's job is to actually adopt the world-view of the character she is playing and to tell the story from that vantage point. If an actor represses large aspects of their personality, they will have a severely limited range and castability. Great actors cultivate effortless access to their subpersonalities. Many acting teachers call this 'freeing your instrument.'

People are probably correct when they see me as the so-called Everyman. I'm attracted primarily to contemporary characters. I understand them and their frustrations.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. [You must] reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

I think whatever you do, if you are going to do well or even if you don't do it well, you have to have a passion for it, and I am passionate about it. I love it. I respect it and it gets me. I get off on acting.

Stay humble. Always answer your phone - no matter who else is in the car.

I was born in an elevator, and - as my mother said - naturally it was going down. She said, "All I remember is telling your father, 'That's it! Never again!'" That's why I'm an only child.

I won't quit until I get run over by a truck, a producer or a critic.

Nobody deserves this much money - certainly not an actor.

When I'm reading material, if I'm a little bit afraid of a part and I'm willing to admit that to myself, then I'll do it, definitely. If I'm worried about being able to do it, to get it -I absolutely just love it.

It can be a simple sentence that makes one single point and you build for that. You zero in on one moment that gets that character, you go for it, that's it, man, and if you fail the whole thing is down the drain, but if you make it you hit the moon.

I have never lost a total passion for my work.

She has never messed up a single take yet. Recently I was in a scene and there was a table covered with a cloth. When the director said cut, I saw a black nose and two paws inching out from under the cloth. She had hidden there without making a sound until we were done with the scene. She wanted to be nearer to me.

how she moves. That's just like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motors. I tell you, it's a whole different sex! Joe: What are you afraid of? Nobody's asking you to have a baby.

I would rather play Hamlet with no rehearsal than TV golf.

I had no desire to be in the movies. All my training had been in the theater, thank God.

I'd rather make the cut in the Crosby than win another Oscar.

I was lying ten and had a thirty-five foot putt. I whispered over my shoulder: "How does this one break?" And my caddie said, "Who cares?"