Ted Cassidy

I never mention my size when I'm after a job in show business.

I was lucky. I missed the struggle. I don't feel I have to pay anyone back for the miserable years. I never had them.

I don't get the sense of doing anything of national importance. I travel to the studio, work and go home.

Crawling into someone's skin is what acting is all about.

It doesn't matter if you're big and tall or ugly or pretty. Deep inside, every actor wants to play Hamlet, at least I hope he does, because that's the craft.

Whenever I'd find myself talking to someone in the kitchen of their home, I'd automatically rest my arm on the refrigerator, simply because it was most convenient. I had to watch myself pretty close - I didn't mind the dusty sleeve, but that glare from the hostess was something else!

I did play semi-pro ball for a time. It was the line of least resistance.

There's not too much opportunity to do that in ordinary life... there's not too much call for hatchet throwers.

Max Baer called me one morning and told me that Carl Foreman was making a movie based on the book 'Mackenna's Gold' and he was sure that I was right for one of the parts. He was so ebullient about it that he bent my ear for 20 minutes.

I've been a tough sailor, a foppish-type landscape gardener, a French villain, a circus strongman.

You will probably be hearing more about this schoolboy. His name is Wilt Chamberlain.

If things get slow, I can always drop around to the gym and dunk a few.

I figure, I want to get a role on my ability, not my size. And anyway, after the director or producer sees me, he remembers what I look like, anyway.

I didn't only play Lurch. I also was 'Thing,' the hand that came up and on-camera every now and then. You should try acting with only one hand sometime. Great discipline.

It was nice to be working steadily and piling up some money in the bank but there really wasn't much to do except walk around and... well, be Lurch.

It's not enough to be 6 feet 9 to get along in this world.

I get no amusement having people eyeball me because of my size.

I turned down a part in 'Petticoat Junction.' They wanted me to play a circus giant. I didn't want to take that step into type casting. I don't want to play freaks and science-fiction monsters.

Acting Is unlike any other profession in the world. It's a succession of jobs. When 'The Addams Family' ends, however good you may be, when that job ends, you end. My gettng the show was a million-to-one shot.

There is no gainsaying that Lurch has put me where I am today. Lurch bought the house I live in. But what's going to happen to a guy like me when it's over? What happens when the show dies in maybe five years? Do I die too? No! I want to go on with other things.

I think kids like Lurch because he's kind of an earthbound superman. They know he's physically strong and they sense that he's a gentle man who loves kids.

One doesn't take a day off from love.

An actor feels the dilemma of being a human being and through his art tries to explain the condition of man.

Only as a child is one truly innocent. When he grows, he must pull on one veneer after another.

Getting Lurch's character straightened out was fun because I was brand new to professional film acting. I had only been in radio up till then as an announcer or a program director.