Bogart Quotes

I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart - they were wonderful actors. They didn't act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.

Why Hollywood has killed so many movie stars with cigarette smoking, with the romanticization of it from John Wayne to Humphrey Bogart, all those people had cancer, died of it, and sold cigarettes their whole career.

Bogart was like Henry Fonda - proud and happy to be an actor.

I've always tried to learn from the greats: Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Ghandi, Buddha, Jesus... it's just that there's this tremendous pressure to correct all the things they got wrong.

I know what love is: Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall, Romeo and Juliet, Jackie and John and Marilyn.

On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turn back time. You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre, contemplating a crime. She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain. Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came in the year of the cat.

My wife's not some doobie to be passed around! I took a vow on our wedding day to bogart her for life.

That's my idol, Elvis Presley. If you went to my house, you'd see pictures all over of Elvis. He's just the greatest entertainer that ever lived. And I think it's because he had such presence. When Elvis walked into a room, Elvis Presley was in the f***ing room. I don't give a f*** who was in the room with him, Bogart, Marilyn Monroe.

Howard Hawks said he'd like to put me in a film with Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. I thought, "Cary Grant-terrific! Humphrey Bogart-yucch."

I loved all those classic figures from the '30s and '40s... Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth. They had such glamour and style. I loved the movies of those times too - so much attention paid to details, lights, clothing, the way the studios would develop talent.

"My obit is going to be full of Bogart, I'm sure," she says, adding, "I'll never know if that's true. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is."

Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, 'Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart?' 'Well, yes, I think I was,' I reply.

He named me. He liked the sound of it. And I said, well, all right. I felt a little odd about it. I don't understand all that name changing business anyway... No, he felt that Lauren Bacall was better sounding than Betty Bacall. He had a vision of his own. He was a svengali. He wanted to mold me. He wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart got involved.

When you're a writer, the question people always ask you is, "Where do you get your ideas?" Writers hate this question. It's like asking Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, "Where do you get your leeches?" You don't get ideas. Ideas get you.

Every time I was with Sammy [Davis Jr.] it was like going to the show business museum because the stories were so extraordinary, and I didn't care if they were true or not after a while. ... I don't know if he really got high with Humphrey Bogart or not. It didn't matter because he was painting these fantastic pictures.

I'll see anything that Humphrey Bogart did. Weird, quirky, I know but that's the way it is.

The old movie stars like Bogart, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, they weren't this gorgeous, striking six-foot man who's rippled with muscles.

Voices are like fingerprints, from Cagney to Bogart. They never lost it. My voice is instrumental in categorizing me.

I was doing my best Bogart, but I was having trouble getting into her jeans.

Every time I go to Europe, I remember that James Dean never saw Europe, but yet I see his face everywhere. There's James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe - windows of the Champs Elysees, discos in the south of Spain, restaurants in Sweden, t-shirts in Moscow. My life was confused and disoriented for years by his passing. My sense of destiny destroyed - the great films he would have directed, the great performances he would have given, the great humanitarian he would have become, and yet, he's the greatest actor and star I have ever known.

My son tells me, 'Do you realize you are the last one? The last person who was an eyewitness to the golden age?' Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, 'Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart?' 'Well, yes, I think I was,' I reply. You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks. I could show you some, but I'd have to climb ladders, and I can't climb

Fame comes with its own standard. A guy who twitches his lips is just another guy with a lip twitch - unless he's Humphrey Bogart.

It's a younger generation running the show, and I miss the generation we had in the '70s. They were really very honorable guys, like Neal Bogart and Bill Graham, people who will never be around again.

When I was a kid going to the movies, we'd go because Bogart was in the movie, or Cagney, or John Wayne. We didn't know what the story was about or anything.

I like most of the Humphrey Bogart movies because they had to act then, and they acted very well. Edward G. Robinson is probably the best actor I've ever seen on the movies.

I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with [Humphrey Bogart].

Bogart could have been color blind. He got to know a man before he decided if he liked him or not.

I remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn't know, and said the theme is 'privacy' and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you're not sure which way to go.

The Big Sleep' is an unsentimental, surrealist excitement in which most of the men in Hollywood's underworld are murdered and most of the women go for an honest but not unwilling private sleuth (Humphrey Bogart).

I'm an incurable romantic, and 'Casablanca''s one of the most romantic pictures I've ever seen - the combination of Bogart and Bergman is just magical.

I watched as Humphrey Bogart’s character used beans as a metaphor for the relative unimportance in the wider world of his relationship with Ingrid Bergman’s character, and chose logic and decency ahead of his selfish emotional desires. The quandary and resulting decision made for an engrossing film. But this was not what people cried about. They were in love and could not be together. I repeated this statement to myself, trying to force an emotional reaction. I couldn’t. I didn’t care. I had enough problems of my own.

I wanted to live where I could pop to the bar that Humphrey Bogart took Lauren Bacall to, or the little restaurant where Charlie Chaplin had a booth.

It was the kind of town that made you feel like Humphrey Bogart: you came in on a bumpy little plane, and, for some mysterious reason, got a private room with a balcony overlooking the town and the harbor; then you sat there and drank until something happened.

I've always been skeptical of people who say they lose themselves in a part. Someone once came up to Spencer Tracy and asked, "Aren't you tired of always playing Tracy?" Tracy replied, "What am I supposed to do, play Bogart?" You have to develop a style that suits you and pursue it, not just develop a bag of tricks.

You had to stay awake married to him [Humphrey Bogart]. Every time I thought I could relax and do everything I wanted, he'd buck. There was no way to predict his reactions, no matter how well I knew him. As he'd said before our wedding, he expected to be happily married and stay that way, but he never expected to settle down. He liked keeping people off balance. He was good for me -- I could never be quite sure what he would do.

I was born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite. Imagine signing that autograph! You'd get a broken arm. So I changed my name to Michael Caine after Humphrey Bogart's 'The Caine Mutiny,' which was playing in the theater across from the telephone booth where I learned that I'd gotten my first TV job.

I watched what I ate for a bit and did a bit of exercise. I wanted to look alright because I knew I had to take my clothes off and I knew I was starring alongside some extremely attractive women! I think it was Humphrey Bogart who said that the only reason people found him attractive was because of the attractive women he played opposite. So, as audience member you go: "Well, if she would find him attractive, then surely I must too!" Playing opposite beautiful actress of the calibre of Rose Byrne and Anna Faris is amazing - it does a lot of the work for you.

The three actors I admire the most are all dead. Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and the French actor, Jean Gabin. They're all very natural, sort of masculine without being overly macho.