Latest Richard Masur Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• The difference between deafness and any other disability is that there is no way to put yourself in a position of knowing what it would be like because you can't stop yourself from hearing your own breath or your own heartbeat. You can not remove sound entirely from your life. You can get a sense of what being blind is like by closing and covering your eyes which provides a source of empathy because we can all project ourselves to that. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't.

  Richard Masur

  Eye, Thinking, People

  Source: www.abilitymagazine.com

• Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.

  Richard Masur

  Believe, Character, Black

  Source: www.abilitymagazine.com

• I did Bored To Death with Jason [Schwartzman] and Zach Galifianakis and those guys. I mean, how lucky can you be that you get to be the old guy? I get to be Robert Preston to them now. That's what I feel. My job is to pass on what Preston and other people gave to me, which was show up, take the work seriously, don't take yourself seriously, and have a good time and be of service. Be there to support.

  Richard Masur

  Jobs, Mean, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

• After three days of shooting with Donald [ Sutherland], I was the only one he worked with for the first three days of the movie [The Winter Of Our Discontent] because of the crazy schedule. We [shot] a lot of this stuff, some of it incredibly intense and emotional. We had never had a conversation during that whole time. We didn't have time.

  Richard Masur

  Crazy, Winter, Emotional

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I used to be the youngest person on the set [of Bored To Death]. Now I'm very often the oldest person on the set. I feel lucky about that, to be honest. Lena [Dunham], by the way is a doll to me. So much fun to work with and really open.

  Richard Masur

  Fun, Bored, Dolls

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Maybe if I'd gone in younger, I wouldn't have had that feeling, but I've seen an enormous amount of changes since the early-'70s in how this stuff is shot. I did the first TV movie ever shot in 18 days; before this film the normal length of shooting a TV movie was between 21 and 26 days. We shot a full-up, two-hour TV movie in 18 days with Donald Sutherland playing the lead, who had never worked on television before.

  Richard Masur

  Two, Feelings, Gone

  Source: www.avclub.com

• People who just wanted to make it work and knew it was going to be a real challenge. We were on the beach the first day and Donald [Sutherland] and I are playing best friends our whole lives. We met each other for 10 seconds the night before and we're sitting on a beach lining up a shot that we shoot a few minutes later, never having had a conversation with each other and then end up going skinny dipping in the Pacific Ocean buck-ass naked, not knowing who the other person is.

  Richard Masur

  Beach, Real, Ocean

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm grateful I got the opportunity to do it because I know this now. If anybody ever asked me to do a daytime show again I would go no, no. I can't do that. Not because it's beneath me. It's above me. It's beyond my resources.

  Richard Masur

  Grateful, Opportunity, Resources

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I mean God knows I've done tons of schlock during the course of my career and stuff that's been very low budget and really pressed for time, but I've never had an experience like this. I kept saying to people, "How do you do this?" I said to Susan [Lucci], "How do you do it?" I don't recall exactly what she answered me but it was something like "Close my eyes and think of England. You just do it."

  Richard Masur

  Mean, Eye, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• She [Susan Lucci] was extraordinary. She wouldn't look at the scene until you walked in to rehearse it. It was amazing to me. That's the impression I got anyway.

  Richard Masur

  Looks, Scene, Impression

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I would never ever, ever, ever, ever do it again [All My Children]. It was the scariest thing I've ever done. I have such respect for people who do it, who can do it. What happened was they caught me at a good moment. I could use the money and this came along and it was with Susan and I thought, "Susan Lucci. I have to do this.

  Richard Masur

  Children, People, Use

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If people don't actively knock the scenery over and they get the words out in something approximating the right order, you're moving on.

  Richard Masur

  Moving, Order, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm one of the handful of survivors of the guys I came up with.

  Richard Masur

  Guy, Survivor, Handful

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I still to this day maintain that in that million-and-a-half feet of film [Heaven's Gate] that we shot, we thought we were making a great American film. I honestly believe that Michael [Cimino] was under a tremendous amount of pressure, and Michael's response to pressure from what I saw was to double down and to get more aggressive and to get more kind of arrogant, but I don't think it was real. I think it was the response to pressure.

  Richard Masur

  Real, Believe, Thinking

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I consider anybody who has been able to make a living in this business [movie business] without having to do something else for a living for any period of time let alone 43 years would be a miracle.

  Richard Masur

  Years, Miracle, Would Be

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I am so grateful for One Day At A Time, even though for years and years and years people would go, "Oh, you were on One Day At A Time." I [am on the show] for about seven months and then this haunts me for the rest of my life. No, I had no regrets.

  Richard Masur

  Regret, Grateful, Years

  Source: www.avclub.com

• In a very real way Norman [Lear] godfathered me into my career. He was the best mentor anybody could have ever had.

  Richard Masur

  Real, Careers, Mentor

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I did my first movie,a movie called Whiffs, which very few people ever saw.

  Richard Masur

  People, Saws, Firsts

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Very interesting show. It's "Hotel" with the E missing. Hot L Baltimore. It was about a rundown hotel which had become kind of a residential not quite welfare but almost welfare hotel with a very bizarre collection of people.The desk clerk was played by Jamie Cromwell. That was his first big thing. Conchata Ferrell played April, the main of the two prostitutes, and my character didn't exist in the [stage] show.

  Richard Masur

  Character, Two, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I moved out to L.A. in July and Hot L Baltimore started in September or October. So I had done a few things. I'd done a Mary [Tyler Moore]. I'd done a Waltons. I hadn't done a Rhoda yet I don't think.

  Richard Masur

  Thinking, July, Hot

  Source: www.avclub.com

• After we did [All In The Family], that ended up being a real love fest all around. Me and Norman, Norman [Lear] and me, Rob Reiner, everybody liked everybody. So about six or seven months later I moved out to L.A. and I got a call that Norman wanted to see me. I came in and he said "ABC has given me a property that they just optioned to make into a TV series. It's from a play called Hot L Baltimore, and I want you to be in it."

  Richard Masur

  Real, Seven Months, Play

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I walk into office, which is the casting office for CBS in New York. Mainly what they cast out of this office was the CBS daytime shows. I go in and walk into this room which every seat is filled with young African-American boys and girls and they were in their teens. I went, "I'm in the wrong place. Why am I here? What's going on?"So I go in and meet Norman [Lear].

  Richard Masur

  Girl, New York, Boys

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I had a very low voice for the character in the show. I said, "That's not actually my voice. That's the character's voice." I'm being such an actor.

  Richard Masur

  Character, Voice, Actors

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I was doing a play in New York, which we had done in New Haven, Connecticut. It was an American premiere of a play called The Changing Room written by a wonderful man named David Story. It was about a rugby team in the North of England. It got just screaming rave reviews. At that time, virtually every major critic went up to the Long Wharf Theater to see a new play like that.

  Richard Masur

  New York, Team, Men

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I have to say I was very lucky in this [movie] business. I was in the right place at the right time when I first got started.

  Richard Masur

  Lucky, Firsts, Right Time

  Source: www.avclub.com