Bela Lugosi Quotes

I studied at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts for four years and emerged with a degree.

My body grew hot, then cold. I tried to eat the bed sheets. My heart beat madly. Every joint in my body ached. When I took the cure they took it all away from me.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

The role seemed to demand that I keep myself worked up to fever pitch, so I took on the actual attributes of the horrible vampire, Dracula.

I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf.

I don't say I don't like people at all, but, to tell you the truth, I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds.

In making theories, always keep a window open so that you can throw one out if necessary.

It is women who bear the race in bloody agony.

Suffering is a kind of horror. Blood is a kind of horror. Women are born with horror in their very bloodstream. It is a biological thing.

I never play without my cape.

I have never met a vampire personally, but I don't know what might happen tomorrow.

Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy.

It was hell to go through what I went through.

I didn't know I had so many friends. Many people gave a damn about my situation. They helped cure me.

Women have a predestination to suffering.

Every actor is somewhat mad, or else he'd be a plumber or a bookkeeper or a salesman.

I don't have a dime left. I am dependent on my friends for food and a small old-age pension.

I'll be truthful. The weekly paycheck is the most important thing to me.

It took several years of hard work in small roles before I attained stardom.

Circumstances made me the theatrical personality I am, which many people believe is also a part of my personal life.

There was no male vampire type in existence.

Someone suggested an actor of the Continental School who could play any type, and mentioned me.

The love-bite, it is the beginning. You will be irresistible.

I'd like to quit the supernatural roles and play just an interesting, down-to-earth person.

To portray a maniac offers a compelling challenge.

If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.

Supernatural perhaps...baloney, perhaps not!

It took me years to live down Dracula and convince the film producers that I would play almost any other type of role.

Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting.

Without movie parts I was reduced to freak status. I just couldn't stand it.

Death, the final, triumphant lover.

Actors were exploited no less by the capitalist managers than they were by the state.

Of all the roles I've done on the stage, I'm partial to Cyrano de Bergerac.

Every producer in Hollywood had set me down as a type. I was both amused and disappointed.

My close-up was magnificent!

I never drink... wine.

I'll take any story if it's good.

When a film company is in the red they come to me. Always it is the same.

I will not be tortured! I tear torture out of myself by torturing you!

That is different, to have someone think that I am evil when I really am not.

It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed on it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out-and come back for more.

Every actor's greatest ambition is to create his own, definite and original role, a character with which he will always be identified. In my case, that role was Dracula.

To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious.

I have played Dracula a thousand times on stage and I find I have become thoroughly settled in the technique of the stage and not of the screen.

The stage is near and dear to me.

I enjoy my work. I haven't been an actor for 30 years without getting pleasure out of the profession.

In the studio the director controls the actor's every move, every inflection, every expression.

I've been using narcotics for 20 years.

The screen magnifies everything, even the way you are thinking.

In Hungary acting is a profession. In America it is a decision.

To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.

If you are not serious, people will sense it.

The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.