Quotes
 : I don`t go to the movies. There`s nothing I want to see. My wife will go out with friends to see a movie now and then, but there`s nothing I want to see.
[2007]
 I have an open-hearth face.
 I never thought I was salable. I learned in my second year of drama school that I was not a leading man -- I was a character actor. So I thought, I`d better be the best character actor around.
 Working in the mills was hard work, but it was good money, I started out as a laborer making $3.49 a day and later, got moved to an even harder position as a bricklayer that had better pay for $5 a day. And for three long and hard years I wondered to myself if this was where I was going to end up for the rest of my life. Finally, I decided I couldn`t stay.
 They asked me how much money I had, and I told them I had saved my every dime from working in the mills, which was about $300. Well, they told me the school tuition for a year was $900. But the man in charge of the school made me an offer I`ll never forget it. He asked me if I was a gambler. He said if I paid the $300, he would take me on and if I worked hard and proved I had talent, somehow he`d find the rest of the tuition money for me.
(When he traveled to Chicago and needed to ask if Goodman School had acting classes)
 During that McCarthy period, I was a frightened young man. I was working, but I was frightened.
 If you look in those mills, and you do it long enough, you never forget that, that`s there to stay because you feel you`ve being used for, not for what you have here, but what you have in your body, in your muscle. It`s demeaning in a way because you`re a human being.
(On being a professional actor, who knew what it was like when he worked with his bare hands)
 And then they talk to you about frustration. The first play I was in, Golden Boy, from that play, John Garfield, went to Hollywood, became a big star. Three years went by, and I did another play with another handsome actor, Gregory Peck, who left that play and went to Hollywood, became a big star, and here I am, plowing away, working away, this is years going by.
([on actors who have moved on to their own film careers, with the exception of himself)
 Zera couldn`t stand seeing a guy, like Kazan, do what he did, and therefore, he even took it out on me and Mona. For a couple of years, this is what happened in New York, at that time, it split people who became close.
(on his friendship with Elia Kazan that led him to the feud of Mostel)
 I never believed that politics had a place in art, that is to say, not in artistic relationships.
 "I am thrilled to be honored by the Screen Actors Guild because I`ve been with it for such a long time. The Screen Actors Guild is sort of a highfalutin name for a union, and this union was always wonderful to work for. For the rank-and-file of the union to honor me is the best compliment I can receive."
 "People have told me that I came to this industry at its Golden Age. But when I was there, it was just an age."
 "I`m a workaholic. I love every movie I`ve been in, even the bad ones, every TV series, every play, because I love to work. It`s what keeps me going."
 [on his early days] "My father was a milkman. So, I delivered milk."
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