My father had a good sense of humour about a lot of things, including life, which I think I inherited. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
As the stars make more and more money – one person gets $12 million, $14 million, $15 million, $20 million – everyone else is expected to work for peanuts. And that includes some extraordinary actors who are, today, working for peanuts because the production companies have decided they don’t need to pay these people, and they don’t. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
The older I get, the more interesting the part has to be. Bobby Knight is extremely interesting. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
The theater business has allowed me, in a way the movie and TV business has not, to do very, very interesting work. So that’s what I do. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
In this business, you have a hierarchy of stars. Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks – you name ’em, they can play any part they want. Guys like me who are somewhere down in the middle of the pack, that’s a different story. I can do things in the theater that I can’t do anyplace else. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
It’d be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I’m not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
No one would ever cast me as an aristocrat. I think the big thing about being an Irish artist is access to melancholy. Especially the American Irish. The availability of loss, some kind of pain, is an important part of who we are. I think my Irishness gave me that. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
My grandfather was a really, really tough no-nonsense factory worker who emigrated from Ireland in about 1900 to Bridgeport, Conn. He had a big effect on me. Those guys who took a great leap out into what they knew not were the ones who were the real stars, the real heroes. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
From 1965 to 1974, I served the best possible apprenticeship for an actor. I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesman thinks. I had to make a life inside those jobs, not just pretend. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody else’s rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes. Brian Dennehy Read Quote
