Aging Actors Quotes

I sit every once in a while and I think about plays and films I can do with William Petersen into our eighties. He's the most incredible scene partner I've ever had.

The life of an action star is very short. I want to be an actor like Robert De Niro, like Dustin Hoffman or Clint Eastwood who in their 70s or 80s can still act.

Film roles really did start to dry up when I got into my 40s.

As an actor ages north of 60, he tends to be in more father roles than anything else. It's generational. And it tends to be a relationship that fascinates people, the flawed relationships between parents and kids.

You know what, it's a time honored tradition in movies in America that if you kill enough people in your 30s and 40s and 50s that by the time you get into your 60s you become loveable.

I hope my next movie is with like 80 year olds because I want to feel young again.

The stars of yesteryears are the grandmothers of today, so why would they cast a Suhasini Mulay, when they can cast a Hema Malini?

A lot of actors in my age bracket look at being still standing as pretty good.

There are some fantastic parts for older actors.

When you get older, unless you're a huge star, the parts become less and the competition becomes greater. Because the guys left standing are the best.

I like to be busy. I once shared an agent with the late Sir John Gielgud, who, at 96, was apparently still ringing up, saying, 'Hello, Gielgud here, any work?' Good on him. We've got to keep working. If we retire, there'll be nobody to play the old wrinklies, and that would be a dreadful shame.

But I've always believed that Christine Cagney shouldn't be played past a certain age.

The main fear about growing old as an actor is not losing the looks. I never had any to speak of, and what I had I've still got, but losing the memory is another matter.

You know, some actors, all of their potential is in their youth, and when that passes, their qualities of as an actor pass. But he - Alan [Rickman] was the opposite, and their are other actors who are like that, who, really, their potential is in maturity.

I was a theater man, so I was never in the situation of being a handsome Hollywood leading man, and then having to age.

I'm a character actor. Nobody's ever seemed to think of me as a leading man. I'm 6'6''. I've got a big nose. I'm gangly. I've got crooked teeth. That's certainly not Brad Pitt. I'm still around and alive, so if they need older guys, I guess they're thinking of me.

There's a certain cruelty to being on a big screen as your eyelids start to sag and your hair falls out and turns gray that you either have to be able to handle or not. What you can't do is try to force yourself into roles that you could have played or would have played ten years earlier.

Actors have limited time. We also have a shelf life.

The more famous an actress becomes, the less she's allowed to eat. Unless she wants to play people's mothers. And in bad clothes, yet.

I think I'm the only 65-year-old actress in Los Angeles who hasn't had plastic surgery, so somebody's gotta play the old-lady parts!

Character roles definitely age better than your ingenues. You don't get to keep doing that.

I've been trying to play old-lady parts since I was in my 20s, so I look forward to all of that.

Growing old on screen is not for the faint of heart.

I think that, on television and in film, I will continue to be the mother to hot boys until, inevitably, I am their grandmother.