Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welleswas an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theatre, radio, and film. He is remembered for his innovative work in all three: in theatre, most notably Caesar, a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar; in radio, the 1938 broadcast "The War of the Worlds", one of the most famous in the history of radio; and in film, Citizen Kane, consistently ranked as one of the all-time greatest films...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth6 May 1915
CityKenosha, WI
CountryUnited States of America
I'm never certain of a performance - my own or the other actors' - or the script or anything... But to me it seems there's only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.
I have no great message to the world.
[The movies] make the sort of comment only a novel can make, an allusion to the world in which people live, the psychological and economic motivations, the influences of the period in which they lived.
The director is the most overrated artist in the world. He is the only artist who, with no talent whatsoever, can be a success for 50 years without his lack of talent ever being discovered.
Almost all serious stories in the world are stories of failure with a death in it. But there is more lost paradise in them than defeat.
If I had only one film in the world to save, it would be 'Grand Illusion.'
I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.
I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Computers combine things to make new knowledge at such high speed that we cannot absorb it.
A toast, Jedediah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anybody ever knows - his own.
When television came along, I'd already done more than 10 years of radio work and I thought everyone would want me. I sat around waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't.
The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.
I worry a lot about taking care of my dependents, all those perfectly ordinary middle-class preoccupations.