Top 15 Quotes by Don Ameche

There are directors you never, ever want to get close to. Lubitsch was one. Outside of the work, I don't think I ever said five words to him. Mamet was pretty much the same thing. His mind is working all the time.

My father ran a saloon in Kenosha, Wis., which is just about as rough a living as I can think of. It was brutal; it scared the hell out of me. I was so petrified all the while I was a child, I didn't know what I was doing half the time.

By 1949, there was no more work for me out there, and I went to New York in 1950 and just did whatever I could. Mainly television. Some Broadway. A lot of dinner theater work, which is not a very satisfactory medium.

I never considered acting while growing up. I just knew I didn't want to go into the saloon business: I wanted to get away from Kenosha. And once I left, never, ever did it cross my mind to go back. I went to college and thought I'd study law.

I'm not like Henry Fonda. He lives to act. I've just had a dedication to do the best I could. When I don't have challenges, the days get long. But I do enjoy being on stage. If I do good work, I get a kick out of that.

In the old days, before there was such a thing as film schools, directors learned the camera by watching other directors, and learning from their own dailies, and listening to the cameraman, and seeing what would work. Some of those guys could cut their movies in their head.