Ernest Borgnine
Ernest Borgnine
Ermes Effron Borgnino, known as Ernest Borgninewas an American film and television actor whose career spanned more than six decades. He was an unconventional lead in many films of the 1950s, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1955 for Marty. On television, he played Quinton McHale in the 1962–1966 series McHale's Navy and co-starred in the mid-1980s action series Airwolf, in addition to a wide variety of other roles. Borgnine earned an Emmy Award nomination at age 92...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth24 January 1917
CityHamden, CT
CountryUnited States of America
Even radar was unheard of when I first went into the service. Then suddenly, they started putting bedsprings up on the tops of ships.
Talk about cowboys. That's my passion. I think it's just wonderful when the studios revert back to doing westerns again.
To this day I clean better than most maids.
My mother made me do all the housework as a boy. I still do it, even in hotels.
I just want to do more work. Every time I step in front of a camera I feel young again. I really do. It keeps your mind active and it keeps you going.
I had a horse in Mexico one time that I rode. He was just bones when I got him. I started feeding him bread and everything else. I called him Bimbo after the bread down there. "Here Bimbo," and he'd come running. He knew me, God bless him. I often wondered what happened to him.
I've been to a number of places and seen for myself the caliber of people who are in the Navy today - in all the services for that matter. This is an altogether different bunch. These people of today are really bright, young, good people.
The Navy has changed a great deal. Not that the officers of my day were bad, because I served under a lot of good officers, believe me. But there were a few bad ones, too.
I don't chart out the life histories of the people I play. If I did, I'd be in trouble. I work with my heart and my head, and naturally emotions follow.
I think we all have the urge to be a clown, whether we know it or not.
The trick is not to become somebody else. You become somebody else when you're in front of a camera or when you're on stage. There are some people who carry it all the time. That, to me, is not acting.
I got a job immediately after leaving high school; I was lucky - three dollars a week and all I could eat, working on a vegetable truck.
I don't care whether a role is 10 minutes long or two hours. And I don't care whether my name is up there on top, either. Matter of fact, I'd rather have someone else get top billing; then if the picture bombs, he gets the blame, not me.
The Oscar made me a star, and I'm grateful. But I feel had I not won the Oscar I wouldn't have gotten into the messes I did in my personal life.