Alan Arkin Quotes

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Alan Arkin

Profession : Actor

Birth : March 26, 1934

I can't even pretend to play golf.

Alan Arkin

My favorite thing about making movies is that it's the only area of human life that I've ever discovered where I can walk away from somebody in the middle of a conversation with somebody and they won't be offended.

Alan Arkin

I love doing kids' shows, and I love working with kids. I've done a lot of it. A lot of people don't like working with children, but I love it.

Alan Arkin

But one of the things I learned from improvising is that all of life is an improvisation, whether you like it or not. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century came out of people dropping things.

Alan Arkin

I'd have to say that my favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning. 'Little Miss Sunshine' is like that. That's my fave genre, if I had to pick one.

Alan Arkin

I love insane, stupid comedy, but I can only make it work if it's a character I can give some history to and make real. Like the guy I played in 'Little Miss Sunshine.' He's a maniac, but to me he was absolutely believable.

Alan Arkin

I don't know why we have to put things in boxes of superlatives. That isolates them. Life is fluid, and the minute you start trying to put a line around something, it will deceive you and go away.

Alan Arkin

I'm used to changing a lot of the dialogue. But if I feel like the script is working, I don't want to mess with it.

Alan Arkin

I get a little upset, yeah, if a year goes by and I don't get a script. Thank God I have other interests that keep me from becoming a nervous wreck.

Alan Arkin

Over the years, I played with a couple of spectacular guitar players, and playing with them has made me play better than I knew how to play. I hope the same thing is true with acting.

Alan Arkin

Things have got to add up to 100 points. The script is part of it, the character is part of it, the people I'm working with is the third part of it - and any combination of the three has got to add up to 100 points.

Alan Arkin

I'm very old. I haven't got time to be charming.

Alan Arkin

I don't like improvising on camera, particularly, but very often, a scene will not be working, and you rehearse it once or twice, and you realize something's missing. So I'll play with it until it makes sense.

Alan Arkin

I used to have a lot of philosophies of acting; they all fell apart over the years.

Alan Arkin

I had to jump around in the arts for a while just to survive. I earned a little money here and there, playing the guitar at union meetings, functions. I sold some science-fiction stories. I knew there was absolutely no question of me not being connected with the arts, but I couldn't find any acting jobs.

Alan Arkin

I know that if I can't move people, then I have no business being an actor.

Alan Arkin

Unless you're doing Shakespeare or Chekhov... the written word is not sacrosanct.

Alan Arkin

That's the privilege of old age: You don't have to remember.

Alan Arkin

I gotta keep busy. I'm not happy unless I'm working on two, three things.

Alan Arkin

I don't mind watching plays once in a while, but as long as I don't have to be in them.

Alan Arkin