A screen actor is compensated in the knowledge that millions will see his performance at one time, where only hundreds will see it on the stage.
Actors were exploited no less by the capitalist managers than they were by the state.
Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy.
Chill drama holds no lure for me as a spectator.
Circumstances made me the theatrical personality I am, which many people believe is also a part of my personal life.
Death, the final, triumphant lover.
Don't do it. If you do, you'll just be haunting houses the rest of your life, like me.
Every actor is somewhat mad, or else he'd be a plumber or a bookkeeper or a salesman.
Every producer in Hollywood had set me down as a type. I was both amused and disappointed.
For the screen, a great deal of repression was an absolute necessity.
Hollywood doesn't let authors, writers, exploit and deliver their talents and imaginations. It has to go through the mill.
I don't have a dime left. I am dependent on my friends for food and a small old-age pension.
I enjoy my work. I haven't been an actor for 30 years without getting pleasure out of the profession.
I fell very much in love with Hope. I needed her kindness, her strength, her care. Fearfully I proposed, and Hope accepted.
I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf. I don't say I don't like people at all, but, to tell you the truth, I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds.
I have lived too completely, I think. I have known every human emotion.
I have never met a vampire personally, but I don't know what might happen tomorrow.
I have no dialogue because I was a bit worried whether I could do justice to the expectations. I'm still recuperating.
I have played Dracula a thousand times on stage and I find I have become thoroughly settled in the technique of the stage and not of the screen.
I look in the mirror and say to myself, Can it be you once played Romeo?
I must know what I have learned. I must analyse all my theories and be alone to think. I'm going into the mountains.
I never play without my cape.
I realized that for my own well being I should make some attempt to conserve my mental and physical strength. I knew every inflection required of the character.
I studied at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts for four years and emerged with a degree.
I used to be the big cheese. Now I'm playing just a dumb part.
I used to inject methadone, but I lost 50 pounds. My limbs became just strings of muscle. When I could no longer find a place to inject, that was the end.
I want to get away from people. I must get away somewhere where I can be free.
I was at my wit's end. I was forced to go on relief.
I'd like to quit the supernatural roles and play just an interesting, down-to-earth person.
I'll be truthful. The weekly paycheck is the most important thing to me.
I'll take any story if it's good.
I've been using narcotics for 20 years.
If I stepped out of my character for even a moment, the seething menace of the terrible Count Dracula was gone, and my hold on the audience lost its force.
If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.
If you are not serious, people will sense it.
In Hungary acting is a profession. In America it is a decision.
In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.
In making theories, always keep a window open so that you can throw one out if necessary.
In pictures, no accent could be registered, since pictures in those days were silent.
In the studio the director controls the actor's every move, every inflection, every expression.
It is women who bear the race in bloody agony. Suffering is a kind of horror. Blood is a kind of horror. Women are born with horror in their very bloodstream. It is a biological thing.
It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed on it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out-and come back for more.
It took me years to live down Dracula and convince the film producers that I would play almost any other type of role.
It took several years of hard work in small roles before I attained stardom.
It was hell to go through what I went through. I didn't know I had so many friends. Many people gave a damn about my situation. They helped cure me.
Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting.
My body grew hot, then cold. I tried to eat the bed sheets. My heart beat madly. Every joint in my body ached. When I took the cure they took it all away from me.
My close-up was magnificent!
Not many more years, and I will have enough of this world's goods to pursue my own course and to pay for whatever research I desire to make.
Of all the roles I've done on the stage, I'm partial to Cyrano de Bergerac.
People, chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging to certainties... they live like ants.
The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.
The actor who goes to Budapest should not feel it a degradation if he has to work in the provinces.
The Black Cat was the picture that secured for me my present stellar part in which I am at last permitted to appear before American audiences in a distinctly romantic characterization.
The former ruling class kept the community of actors in ignorance by means of various lies.
The love-bite, it is the beginning. You will be irresistible.
The mortgage company got my house. I sold one car and then the other. I borrowed where I could.
The role seemed to demand that I keep myself worked up to fever pitch, so I took on the actual attributes of the horrible vampire, Dracula.
The screen magnifies everything, even the way you are thinking.
The stage is near and dear to me.
The vampire was a complete change from the usual romantic characters I was playing, but it was a success.
There was a great deal I had to unlearn. In the theatre there was exaggeration in everything I did.
There was no male vampire type in existence. Someone suggested an actor of the Continental School who could play any type, and mentioned me.
To portray a maniac offers a compelling challenge.
To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.
When a film company is in the red they come to me. Always it is the same.
Without movie parts I was reduced to freak status. I just couldn't stand it.
Women have a predestination to suffering.
You can't make people believe in you if you play a horror part with your tongue in your cheek.
While Boris Karloff was playing the role of Jonathan Brewster in the Broadway production of Arsenic and Old Lace, Lugosi was playing the same role in the traveling road company of the play.
Bela frequently rented out his house for film companies to use when he was short on cash (which was rather often).
Bela's son, Bela Jr., bears an astounding resemblance to the University of North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams.
Bela's fourth wife, Lillian Arch, was only 20 years old when the two married in 1932. Bela was nearing 50 if the 1882 birthdate for him is correct.
Bela wanted to play the role of the scientist in Frankenstein (1931), and would have accepted that role had it been offered - but Colin Clive was cast instead.
The first film in which Bela and Boris Karloff appeared together was 1934's The Black Cat. The film concludes with Lugosi strapping Karloff to a rack and flaying him alive.
Forrest J. Ackerman the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland once claimed that he prevented a depressed Bela from committing suicide in 1954.
Bela played the role of the sinister, broken necked shepherd "Ygor" in two movies: Son of Frankenstein (1939), and Ghost of Frankenstein (1942).
Bela and fellow Hungarian Peter Lorre appeared in only one film together: the 1940 horror spoof You'll Find Out.
Bela played his most famous role of "Count Dracula" on-screen twice: the first time in the classic 1931 film; the second time for laughs in 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Bela's fourth wife, Lillian, would get re-married to actor Brian Donlevy after divorcing Lugosi.
Actor Basil Rathbone once recounted that Bela was drinking heavily on the set of his last true film appearance: The Big Sleep (1956).
Bela declined an offer to appear as "The Monster" in Frankenstein (1931) because the role had no dialogue and would have concealed Lugosi beneath heavy makeup. The role was taken by the man who became Lugosi's principal rival in horror films, Boris Karloff.
In 1924, Bela signed on to direct a drama titled The Right to Dream, but was unable to communicate with his cast and crew which got him quickly fired. He sued the producers, but was found by the court to be unable to helm a theatrical production and was ordered to pay fines totalling close to 70 dollars. When he refused, the contents of his apartment were auctioned off to pay his court costs - an inauspicious beginning to his life in America, indeed.
Bela was buried wearing one of the many capes from the Dracula stageplay, as per the request of his fifth wife and son. While it was stated that Lugosi made no requests regarding his burial, either verbally or through his will, this appears to be urban myth; verification can be obtained from the special edition DVD of Dracula.
On June 26, 1931 - Bela became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
During World War I, Bela served as an infantry lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army.
Bela's natural eye colour was blue.
Bela's Star on the Walk of Fame for his contributions to the Motion Picture industry is located at 6340 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA.
Bela was further immortalized in the song "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by the Bauhaus, which was featured in The Hunger (1983), and went on to become a dancefloor mainstay at goth dance clubs in the 1980s.
In Bela's collaborations with Boris Karloff at Universal, it was Karloff who always got top billing. When these same films were released as part of a DVD box set in 2005, Universal chose to market them as "The Bela Lugosi Collection."
Bela's performance in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931/I) created such a sensation that he reportedly received more fan mail from females than even Clark Gable.
Bela performed in live-action reference footage for the Night on Bald Mountain sequence of Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940). He was, of course, the demon.
Bela's first stage role in the US was in The Red Poppy. Unable to speak English, he was forced to learn the role by rote. He was rewarded with excellent reviews and it earned him his first US film role.
Contrary to popular belief, Bela and Boris Karloff did not hate each other, as the famous scene from Ed Wood (1994) would lead one to believe. Both men's children have said that the only rivalry that existed between them is when they were both up for the same parts, and in reality, Lugosi and Karloff had almost no relationship off-set. However, near the sad end of his life, Lugosi allegedly had some morphine-addled fantasies that Karloff was a boogie man out to get him.
Were it not for his death, Lon Chaney, rather than Bela, would have been the director Tod Browning's choice for the starring role in Dracula (1931/I).
Bela's son, Bela Lugosi Jr., practices law in Los Angeles, California.
Bela's nickname was "Adelbert" which also was his Confirmation name.
Bela was one of the charter members of the Screen Actors Guild. He was SAG member # 23.
Legend has it that Final Curtain was the script Bela was reading when he died. When they found Bela dead on the couch, he was clutching this script, written by his good friend Ed Wood.
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