Angela Lansbury Quotes

Better to be busy than to be busy worrying.

You just have to be open and ready, and let it all happen.

The purpose of etiquette is to provide an easy set of rules which we can follow when we are in a hurry and want to make sure that we do not give offense to anybody.

I was put under contract. A major studio. I got nominated for an Academy Award. Isn't that ridiculous? I mean, at the age of 18!

Here I am, I still go on, you know, like the tides.

We all have levels of performance.

I'm the bionic woman. I have a very strong constitution, and I take excruciatingly good care of myself.

The older I get, the more I realize how much I have missed because I was so busy entertaining that audience and so busy pursuing a career.

... because lifestyles are changing constantly the rules of etiquette are changing too -- a little slower than lifestyles perhaps, but still changing.

I'm not going to be dancing with the stars at this stage in my life. But I want to dance and bop around, and I did, and I can.

The theater is magical and addictive.

I'm Angie to everybody, you've got to learn.

I don't think about going back to the theater.

My daughter used to sit and watch Murder, She Wrote. I tried to watch with her, but I fell asleep.

The collaboration really begins once the rehearsal starts. This is when the actor takes his place, because he becomes the one who is going to bring the words of the author off the page.

Mystery is something that appeals to most everybody.

I've worked with the greatest actors, and they're all gone. This is what's so desperate to me.

I think of myself as a journeyman actress. I will attempt almost anything that I think that I can bring off. It could be almost anything.

Actually the years when I was playing totally un - well, they were just roles that just went by the board, you wouldn't want to know. But anyway, I'm glad I had that chance to build my craft.

Believe me, it jabs you. When you're on the side of buses and New York loves you, you love to go out there every night. It's like a race. Curtain opens, out you go, and New York is yours.

Clint Eastwood is an extraordinary director because he knows the value of a buck. He knows where it will show on the screen.

I can't say that I deserve longlife; I don't. I've just been around long enough. They say, "My God, she's still here."

I have never directed. But I think I could. I have thought about it. I'm a bit long in the tooth to start.

It was an extraordinary experience to have backup singers like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I have never experienced anything quite like it before and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.

They're great devotees of Noel Coward in England, of course, he's a favorite son, and so to play Coward in London is such fun, and anyway, the role is such a crazy lady. I just love doing that.

When I opened up in "Gaslight," for instance, playing that narky maid, that all came about from my experience and my training up to that point, and so nothing was wasted.

I made about 56 movies, I think. Not that many.

I really wanted to go back to the theater, the live theater. That was the thing I had never had a chance to do, even though I had trained to be a stage actress.

Well oddly enough, I liken the years at MGM, and I was there for about eight years, to doing stock, what we used to call repertory or stock, playing a whole bunch of different roles.

I'd been out of the movies for years, I had had a wonderful stage career, yes, in musicals and so on, but you don't really make any money in the theater.

Louis B. Mayer and I got along like a house afire. He never chased me around his desk or tried anything with me. Of course, he never gave me any good parts, either.

The Manchurian Candidate was the most important movie I was in, let's face it.

I played the Piccadilly Theater with "Gypsy" and also the Old Vic, and I've done other shows in London, but not for 40 years.

I can't say that I pursued a career. I really didn't, it just sort of happened.

My memory about names and places now is dreadful. But lines, I can remember.

I very seldom said no, and I was aided and abetted by my husband, who realized that the one thing I could do was to be a very good actress, by his note.

All I knew how to do was to act. That's the only thing I had in my favor. That was the thing that propelled me forward.

I never regretted what I turned down.

A sitcom. I hate that word.

The thing I always say is that I wasn't going out reaching for roles, I wasn't fighting for roles - people came to me. They always came to me.

You learn the values that are inherent in the scene that the writer has written. You learn about who you as a character are in relation to those others who are working with you within that scene.

Everything I did actually helped to build the revenue, shall we say, of experience, which enabled me to play a variety of roles as I got older.

Actors are not made, they are born.