Quotes by Brian Dennehy

About Brian Dennehy:

Brian Mannion Dennehy is an American actor of film, stage, and television. After gaining recognition for portraying the corrupt Sheriff Will Teasle in First Blood (1982), Dennehy went on to win one Golden Globe, two Tony Awards and six Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

You know, you get to a certain age, 45, 50, I don't know when it happens, I said, 'Jesus, all I got is a certain amount of time. Maybe I should think about using it a little better.'

Brian Dennehy

From 1965 to 1974, I served the best possible apprenticeship for an actor. I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesman thinks. I had to make a life inside those jobs, not just pretend.

Brian Dennehy

I've got two artificial knees, I have an artificial shoulder, and I'm reasonably healthy given the damage I've done to myself. Everything hurts.

Brian Dennehy

I was in high school in 1953 when the Committee of One Million circulated a petition urging that Red China - one third of the world's population - be excluded from the United Nations. And I remember I refused to sign it, at 14 or 15 years old.

Brian Dennehy

I lied about serving in Vietnam, and I'm sorry. I did not mean to take away from the actions and the sacrifices of the ones who did really serve there... I did steal valor. That was very wrong of me. There is no real excuse for that.

Brian Dennehy

I remember playing John Wayne Gacy, serial killer, very sick, neurotic, screwed-up guy. You know what? There's a part of me there, too, and you explore that.

Brian Dennehy

I idolize Gene Hackman. He is not a natural star, not an incandescent personality like Jack Nicholson, but he makes luminous the problems of being an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation.

Brian Dennehy

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

Brian Dennehy

No one would ever cast me as an aristocrat. I think the big thing about being an Irish artist is access to melancholy. Especially the American Irish. The availability of loss, some kind of pain, is an important part of who we are. I think my Irishnes...

Brian Dennehy

It'd be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I'm not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays.

Brian Dennehy

The older I get, the more interesting the part has to be. Bobby Knight is extremely interesting.

Brian Dennehy

I come from an Irish Catholic family, and hell-raising is part of the DNA.

Brian Dennehy

I'm not in the movie business anymore, and hardly any 70 year olds are. I always ask the producers: 'Are there no 70-year old vampires?' Apparently there are not - or even zombies for that matter. I guess they all get eaten.

Brian Dennehy

It took a long time for me to have any impact in the business because I didn't look like an actor, I didn't sound like an actor.

Brian Dennehy

In this business, you have a hierarchy of stars. Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks - you name 'em, they can play any part they want. Guys like me who are somewhere down in the middle of the pack, that's a different story. I can do things in the theater that I...

Brian Dennehy

The theater business has allowed me, in a way the movie and TV business has not, to do very, very interesting work. So that's what I do.

Brian Dennehy

My grandfather was a really, really tough no-nonsense factory worker who emigrated from Ireland in about 1900 to Bridgeport, Conn. He had a big effect on me. Those guys who took a great leap out into what they knew not were the ones who were the real...

Brian Dennehy

At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody else's rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.

Brian Dennehy

My father had a good sense of humour about a lot of things, including life, which I think I inherited.

Brian Dennehy

When you think about it, what's the difference between Bobby Knight and Vince Lombardi? Why is one guy a god, and the other guy is regarded as a crazy man?

Brian Dennehy

Author Bio

  • NameBrian Dennehy
  • DescriptionAmerican actor
  • AliasesBrian Mannion Dennehy
  • BornJuly 9, 1938
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionActor
  • AwardsLaurence Olivier Award