Top 29 Quotes by 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.

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 stars, the real heroes.

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.

Theater is a physical activity as much as anything. It's harder for me to learn the lines than it was 30 years ago. At the same time, I'll never quit working in the theater - until I can't memorize two lines back to back.

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 can't do anyplace else.

As the stars make more and more money - one person gets $12 million, $14 million, $15 million, $20 million - everyone else is expected to work for peanuts. And that includes some extraordinary actors who are, today, working for peanuts because the production companies have decided they don't need to pay these people, and they don't.