Peter Falk

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.'

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

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.'

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I'm not an ace at small talk.

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

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

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.'

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

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.'

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

Your instincts for what's dramatic are the same whether you're working on a drawing or on a script.

Most people think glamor is happiness.

If you were brought up in the '40s, a kid in Ossining, New York, hanging out at the poolroom and stealing, how can you think, 'Here I am in Ossining. I, too, can be a movie star!'

It depends how lenient you are with your definition of artist. If you're going to include those who tap dance at the high school recital, then maybe I am.

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.

Acting is like golf: analysis leads to paralysis.

I don't like getting up in the morning, getting in a car, driving on a freeway, and stopping at a gate where two guards are standing there, then walk into a studio that looks like a bunch of airplane hangars.

I've been there a thousand years, and I never felt comfortable. Beverly Hills - when I first saw it, I thought they put it up this morning. You got to pack water to get to the drugstore.

I once did a film in Russia because I wanted to see what the hell was going on there.

Good actors are always looking for props. They're looking for behavior. It makes it a lot easier. You're not solely dependent of what's coming out of your mouth. You're also less self-conscious, less aware of the camera.

Actors know one thing: If you're left just with words, you're in trouble.

In order to be totally spontaneous, you can't be too obsessed with accuracy, but if you're inaccurate in a drawing, it will look fake, and when you act, it will sound fake. You have to find miraculously some proper balance between the two, but there's no formula.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The truth is, no one is like Columbo.

I'm secretly very stuffy.

Strange thing, this television.

I did do my own stunts.

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

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.