Peter Falk

You thought the stage, you thought Broadway: that was the pot at the end of the rainbow. The idea of being in Hollywood was like going to the Moon or Mars.

I never understood a word John Cassavetes said. And I think he did that deliberately.

I've been asked a few thousand times how much of Columbo is Falk and vice versa.

I'm just looking to get through the day.

I think people identify with Columbo because he is an average man.

I did do my own stunts.

If I'm a guy reading a newspaper, and I hear this actor who I know gets great seats at basketball games, and he's complaining about being typecast, I think, 'Hey man, count your blessings.'

Children ran up to me shouting, 'Columbo!' At first, it gave me great pleasure, but later, I said to myself that those children should have had their own heroes instead of admiring a cop from Los Angeles.

Sometimes I was in school plays, but only when the kid they'd originally picked got sick and they asked me to substitute.

Usually, I get hired because I'm tall.

I had two ambitions: One was to be in The Actors Studio, and the other was to walk into a bar where actors hung out, and everyone would know that I was a professional actor and I would be accepted.

I lose things. I am preoccupied. I am misty. Eyeglasses? I go through eyeglasses like tissue.

Before we ever had a script or anything, I was attracted to the idea of playing a character that housed within himself two opposing traits.

What wouldn't have happened to me if I hadn't ended up in Hartford, Connecticut.

Hartford had the Mark Twain Masquers, which was fantastic. They had been in business I don't know how many years. They knew how to build sets and sell tickets and put on a play. My day started at night. When I left the office, that's when my day began.

It became the joke of the neighbourhood. If the umpire ruled me out on a bad call, I'd take the fake eye out and hand it to him.

The first time I ever spoke to John Cassavetes was at a Lakers game. I got up to go for a hot dog, and he was coming in the opposite direction. I don't know who said hello first, but we started talking, and it turned out that he went to high school with my first wife, Alice.

In 1958, I was shooting a movie in Florida, and I decided to go to Havana, Cuba, to see what it was like.

If it wasn't for the Mark Twain Masquers, I don't know where my life would have gone.

I used to have this idea that you can spend years in the movies and TV and then, at the drop of a hat, say 'Oh, I'll go back and do the theater.'

I had no idea when I graduated from high school and then from graduate school what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea that I was ever going to be an actor.

I remember being amazed that actors had a union. I thought only coal miners had unions, or guys that worked in automobile plants. That's an indication of how naive I was.

In the theater, you didn't have any marks. Your instincts in rehearsal told you what the blocking was. On film, they reversed it. They decided ahead of time what your instincts were, before you even arrived.

I'm old fashioned. I really think you should know how to draw before you start painting. I use charcoal and graphite; I put a skylight in. In my house, I turned the garage into an art studio. So I'm awash in art studios.

I do figure every angle of a guy I'm acting - but not consciously 'til afterward.

Going to Hartford turned out to be the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.

My father's whole life was work. He had a retail store in Ossining, New York, and I mean, he was down there at 6:15 every morning. The store didn't open until 9, but he hadda be down there. That's all he knew.

I wanted to become an actor, but I didn't want to admit it.

I just keep working.

Initially, they wanted Columbo to wear a driving coat. I said: 'Are you kidding? He's not an English aristocrat.'

I love Chicago. It's one of the great cities. I'm crazy about the town. It reminds me of New York when it was at its best, the New York that used to be and is no more. I love the architecture, the old stuff and the new stuff.

Sure, I miss some things about the stage. The thing I like is the immediacy. But then I complain, 'I gotta do the same part for six months.'

You talk about what a director, he was smart. He said, Turn the camera on!

When I go see a basketball game, I'm always in the front row. I always have a table at a restaurant; I never have trouble getting a taxi.

I never turned a part down when they offered me money.

The only mountain that I would still like to climb: I'd like to break 85.

I watch practically no TV - ah, what the hell do I watch? Oh, I was for a long time addicted to CNN.

I used to take girls out on a date to Night Court. And I'll tell you, most girls, they got a kick out of going to Night Court. 'Cause you get a lot of laughs... and it's cheap.

The entertainment industry is loaded with extraordinarily talented people. But the true, genuine originals, they're rare.

God didn't design anyone to be recognized by 2 billion people.

When I was growing up in Ossining, N.Y., playing pool with the guys, the thought that any one of us might become an actor was as far-fetched as being knighted by the queen of England.

I've worked with some terrific actors. The list of guys that came on the 'Columbo' show, I mean they were world-class actors from all over the world - Oskar Werner, Laurence Harvey, Donald Pleasence, you know... foreigners.

The celebrity craze is a little much. But it's good for me, so you don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Strange thing, this television.

When I was young, I was looking for people to look up to - role models I could respect.

I was a street-guy villain. I was a street-corner villain. I was an illiterate villain. All rough edges.

I came to Hollywood and nobody knew me. I was on a coupla TV shows.

Oh, I was some efficiency expert. On my first day, I couldn't find my own office in Hartford and wound up in the Post Office.

It helps an actor an awful lot when he looks like the part. There's nothing more disconcerting, that makes you more anxious or more insecure, than when you don't look like who you're supposed to be.

Columbo was never comfortable if somebody considered him unique or smart.

Even the first year of 'Columbo,' 'Columbo' was Jesus Christ, No. 1, you know.

I didn't become an actor until I was an old man of 28 or 29. I declared to the world that I was an actor. Nobody heard me, but I did declare it.

To be totally sincere, I'd surely be a better actor today if I hadn't played Columbo all these years.

The whole thing was an actor's dream - getting a character that tickles you so much you can't wait to act as him.

You think you're in another civilization, another time, and then you see antennas coming out of these hovels, and your mouth falls open when you see the descendants of the Incas shouting 'Columbo! Columbo!'

In the beginning, when you're acting in amateur theater and off-Broadway, it was unheard of that anyone else would get your costume. And it was important to get a good costume. You put time into that.

I've never worried about the grand concepts.

I thought actors were artists and that artists had to be European.

I still get fan mail for Columbo.

Certainly, you envy the guys that have done all kinds of things, a variety of good scripts and good directors. Then again, having worked with Cassavetes has satisfied a big part of that.

The truth is, no one is like Columbo.

I hate to talk about typecasting, because being typecast as Columbo ain't cancer.

I got a regret: That I started acting so late. I was 27, and guys who start at 18 or so, there's this kinda continuity of friendships they form in the profession by startin' young, I've never had that.

I used to dread somebody saying, 'Whatsa matter with your eye?'

When I was a kid, the idea of gettin' paid to paint your face... listen, I grew up in Ossining, New York, a nice little town by the Hudson, and nothin' ever interested me except being your usual high school big shot, which I was an' loved it, played all the sports and goofed around, always out on the street with the guys, everything was funny t'me.

If your mind is at work, we're in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we'll come up with something original.

They wouldn't take me in the navy because of my glass eye. So I joined the merchant navy, who allowed monocular crew if you worked in the kitchens. You're not wanted on deck or in the engine room with one eye, but you're good to fire up the ovens and cook hundreds of chops.

I'm secretly very stuffy.

The female body is awesome.

There were no artists in Ossining, which was the home of Sing Sing prison. Most of the parents of the guys I knew were guards there.

I like stories that grow, that have unpredictable layers. As opposed to Hollywood movies that start out with a lot of shock and noise and peter out into an unconvincing cliche.

I'm not an ace at small talk.

My wife loves to get all dressed up and go out, and I'm this gloomy Virgo. It works because of the mutual recognition that we are two democratic narcissists. She does what she has to do, and I do what I have to do. We respect that.

There's a bit of a problem. The script that I like, the network doesn't like. The script that they like, I don't like.

There isn't an Eskimo who doesn't love 'Columbo.'

When I was a kid growing up, you maybe secretly wanted to be an actor, but you never said.

I'm makin' a lotta dough, everyone knows who you are, and who the hell cares whether you're typecast or not? Also, there's something wrong with complaining about being typecast in something you really enjoy doing.

To be a theater actor, I think you have to do plays all the time.