Quote #69

I have never seen an actor as dedicated, with the extreme concentration and exceptional imagination as James Dean. He could take the written imaginary circumstance and make it his own by improvising - lying on the ground in a fetal position playing with a wound-up toy monkey beating its cymbals, giggling while being searched in the police station because it tickled, standing up in a drunken daze making the sound of sirens with his arms outstretched, hitting his fists into the sergeant's desk, jumping off a diving board into a swimming pool with no water, or doing the voice of Mr. Magoo throughout the movie, which was the voice of Jim Backus, his father in Rebel - things that were not written on the page, things that were invented by the actor.

More from James Dean

  1. Jimmy was not only an internal actor, but an expressionist, which came partly from his studying dance. He would physicalize actions, such a…
  2. I would like to go to Indiana and mess with James Dean's soil, but so many others have done it. They've taken away the monument, they've ta…
  3. The only time I ever worked with James Dean was in a 1953 off-Broadway production called The Scarecrow. He played the Scarecrow's reflectio…
  4. It's a good thing Dean died when he did. If he'd lived, he'd never have been able to live up to the publicity.
  5. Actually, the person I related to was James Dean. I grew up with the Dean thing. Rebel Without A Cause had a very powerful effect on me.
  6. It wasn't so much a matter of whom I was acting with, it was whom I was watching: Marlon Brando, Maureen Stapleton, Geraldine Page, Jimmy D…
  7. Jimmy Dean loved the feel of Indiana soil under his feet and I think that was the source of much of his strength.
  8. What I remember most about him was the little boy quality shining forth at you from behind those thick glasses of his, tearing at your hear…

All James Dean quotes