Ron Perlman Quotes & Sayings

I'm not religious, but I am spiritual. I have my own relationship with a being that I consider to be everywhere. All and everything. I don't need a church or a synagogue or a mosque. I don't need to kneel down, I don't need to stand up, I don't need to be hanging from a thread. — Ron Perlman

Fearless people are interesting to watch. — Ron Perlman

I like playing interesting people, I like playing slightly twisted people. I like playing people who have large appetites who are kind of a bit larger than life. — Ron Perlman

I realized you don't need to belong to any fuckin' edifice or ascribe to any dogma to have a relationship with God, to be a good person. You just have to be a good person. — Ron Perlman

I love showing up and giving a performance without the benefit of a lot of rehearsal or dissection. It's fun to me to act on a kind of instinctual level and go straight for the performance. — Ron Perlman

I think in the early part of my career, the roles were so disparate that it never gave anybody an opportunity to understand my essence and what I would be good at doing, as opposed to what I would not be good at doing, so these little moments of beautiful things that were happening to me were consistent, but very few and very far between. — Ron Perlman

Cinema to me is like a religion. If I was going to have a religion it would be cinema. — Ron Perlman

I say yes to almost anything that comes my way. — Ron Perlman

Distortions control my self-image, like they do for a lot of us. It's irrational. — Ron Perlman

The thing that's cool about the recording booth is that it's so perfunctory, so cut-to-the-chase. — Ron Perlman

Well, I love acting, and I love acting quick. — Ron Perlman

Death is a thief, the grandest perpetrator of larceny of all. It robs the potential of all the things left undone and reimburses the living with bits of memories that, with each day, pass through the fingers like a handful of sand. — Ron Perlman

It's really disgusting what Hollywood can do to a guy. — Ron Perlman

Guys who are larger than life and theatrical and deliciously unpredictable - they're far more interesting than the good guys most of the time. They have these psychological layers that an audience can really cling on to, become fascinated with, much more so than these true-blue, one-dimensional, square-jawed good guys. — Ron Perlman

That's always been Guillermo's preference, is to have as much there practically as is humanly possible, and that digital graphic images are more a punctuation mark than they are a replacement. — Ron Perlman

I'm not a social rider. Strictly professional. — Ron Perlman

You draw on your own childhood every time you tee it up as an actor. — Ron Perlman

Fuck waiting for the world to change you; you start by trying to change it. And if you are pure of heart and your intentions are good, you can't lose. Even if nothing happens, you can't lose. — Ron Perlman

There are always great deals of humanity in the characters that have been offered to me. — Ron Perlman

My whole mantra is, "Go big or go home." I don't want to just play a guy who dresses up. I want to play the person who threw down. — Ron Perlman

I like being this guy who says we're all in this together. I've gone right up to the top and said, "You might be the producer, the guy with all the money, but treat people with respect goddammit, because if you don't, you're going to hear from me. We're all equal here, from the lowliest guy to the filmmaker. We are all trying to bring our A-game here, so don't fuck with people. — Ron Perlman

Working at a job that you hate. Having a career and a life that you have no passion for. That's hell. — Ron Perlman

I've always felt there were aspects of me that were monstrous, and you can either hide from it or confront it, embrace it and understand that those are aspects that make you unique and define you and motivate you. You can either overwhelm or overcompensate for them
but they truly define you as a human being ... So that life became a question of either dealing with this monstrousness in one way or another ... One finds a way to understand and make friends with that monster and understand that that's the very thing that makes you who you are. That's your emotional and spiritual fingerprint. — Ron Perlman

I've never worked with a tail, that I can remember. But there's so much I can't remember. — Ron Perlman

I just think that there are those people that their resolve is strengthened by what it is that's keeping them down, and there are some people that will buckle under it. You never know which one is which until you get into the eighth or ninth round of the fight. — Ron Perlman

Literature is nothing more than the expansion of storytelling. Storytelling is obviously the impulse to chronicle something you've been through in order to give it its due, to have a catharsis. — Ron Perlman

I'm continuing to do research into biker culture. — Ron Perlman

I think there are a lot of technocrats in the business who would much rather work with just wheels and gears and machinery. Those things interest them more than humanity and I wish them the best of luck. — Ron Perlman

I've certainly been very blessed with opportunity. — Ron Perlman

Look at the people who are coming to television Ridley Scott, Ang Lee or Guillermo del Toro - all these great filmmakers - actively put themselves back into TV. That's because the environment is very encouraging for bold storytelling, storytelling that you've never seen before. — Ron Perlman

The great thing about arriving at this age is that I don't even care about my career anymore. — Ron Perlman

If something strikes me as insane and unjust, I cannot tolerate that. — Ron Perlman

A lot of people have been bent one way or the other on that. I'm not going to weigh in on that; I'm happy to still be at large, I'll just put it that way. — Ron Perlman

I lost 90 pounds and my blood pressure went down to a normal level and the salt in my urine disappeared. And that was when I had to make the transition from fat character actor to thin character actor. — Ron Perlman

Let me put it this way: I definitely need to understand the villains I play. The best cause pain to anesthetize themselves against their own pain. — Ron Perlman

I like doing voiceover work. I just like it in general, because you're constantly working on a very first-instinct level. You show up, you get in front of the microphone, you look at the lines, you say the lines, and then you move on. You work on a really primal level, is what I'm saying. You don't have to shave. You don't even have to wear pants. But, uh, that wasn't your question. — Ron Perlman

Yeah, it's nice to get paid for therapy rather than having to pay $240 an hour for it. — Ron Perlman

I'm thankful to be breathing, on this side of the grass. Whatever comes, comes. — Ron Perlman

I live in a bubble. — Ron Perlman

No matter what line of work you do, success cannot truly be achieved until you own who you are. The most offensive liability then becomes an asset. It makes you perform your best, regardless of the challenges you might face. — Ron Perlman

In the early '90s, when those little art films started coming out, we were introduced to Quentin Tarantino and guys like that, and independent cinema was something that everyone wanted to be a part of. — Ron Perlman

I think now that I'm in the autumn of my life, and I'm getting a chance of having an overview and looking at the shape of how things happen, when things happen, why things happen, I think it was fitting that I spent most of my early career doing mask work, because I just don't think I was that comfortable in my own skin. — Ron Perlman

I'm real comfortable around people, and it took a long time for me to evolve to that point. — Ron Perlman

I don't think that I've had a career like anyone else's, but there are hosts and hosts of actors whose careers I admire. — Ron Perlman

Season 4 can be deadly for a show that's been a hit show. — Ron Perlman

I don't ever want to be comfortable with anything I'm doing. — Ron Perlman

As an actor or anybody as a human being, I feel more and more like I want to spend time doing something significant. Because what's the alternative? Spend your life wasting your time. — Ron Perlman

I actually think it's harder to play vulnerability, because you're having to delve deeper into portions of your own psyche, what it is that makes you human. — Ron Perlman

I like to believe that everyone is born with the same skill set, and that it is the influences that one comes upon. — Ron Perlman

I've been a professional actor for almost 40 years. — Ron Perlman

1% of the population has all the money and the other 99% have nothing. — Ron Perlman

None of us are any better than anyone else and none of us are any worse than anyone else, and we're all equal and whatever we can do to celebrate our commonality rather than our differences, which is what religion does, to me ... religion just compartmentalizes people and makes everybody into a box. — Ron Perlman

I will not do a role that I don't think I can do, that I'm not interested in, where there's no humanity, that doesn't have any kind of handle for me at all because I know I'll just stink the joint up. — Ron Perlman

The luxury of television is that you get more than one shot at who you think the guy is that you're playing. — Ron Perlman

there is no life free of pain, loss, despair, confusion, violence, and, yes, even death. To make it a goal to think you could ever live a life that avoided all these things is pure folly, and you can only fall short. What there is, however, is the ability to manage one's way through these things so that, in addressing them, you remain as whole as possible, as present as possible, as undaunted as possible. For that is the closest you are ever gonna get to real, real contentment. — Ron Perlman

I expect that everything I do will be not watched or not seen. That way, I'm never disappointed when I become flooded with that reality. — Ron Perlman

I'm kind of one of these guys who wants to play everything once before it's all over. — Ron Perlman

The only way to grab the attention of the audience is originality. We feed ourselves with franchises that's the opposite of what makes our culture multidimensional and interesting. — Ron Perlman

Almost all of your life is lived by the seat of your pants, one unexpected event crashing into another, with no pattern or reason, and then you finally reach a point, around my age, where you spend more time than ever looking back. Why did this happen? Look where that led? You see the shape of things. — Ron Perlman

Well, I don't have an agenda. — Ron Perlman

Living off the grid and being kind of an outlaw brings a dangerous reality. — Ron Perlman

I, for one, am not nearly as engaged when I'm looking at something that's been completely drawn up on a computer that replaces anything that's in real time and real space. It just engages me all the less, rather than all the more. — Ron Perlman

Really, I was such a late bloomer, I really didn't learn how to be me until I was in my late '40s, which is when I started playing roles that were closer to me. — Ron Perlman

I've had biker clubs reach out to me whenever they knew I was in their city. — Ron Perlman

Independent film is almost nonexistent right now, because all the distributers that used to love to put out these little art films are all out of business right now, because it costs so much to open a movie. — Ron Perlman

I've never been pigeonholed and I've experienced so many different kinds of skin - what man will do and won't do, what you should do and shouldn't do. This is what's exciting about being an actor; where philosophy majors sit in classrooms or write books about human behavior, we're actually acting them out in front of cameras. — Ron Perlman

I'm fully aware that things that resonate and become real hits are the exception to the rule, so much so that I've wired myself for failure. — Ron Perlman

I had an opportunity to be in Frank's [Sinatra] circle, but I couldn't take advantage of it because I couldn't get over how awed I was by him. It was so uncomfortable for me because he meant so much to me, but I just couldn't be myself, so I fled rather than having those great nights hanging out. — Ron Perlman

I feel as though my criteria are based more on how challenging the role is, it doesn't have to fit into any particular profile, is it something that I've never done before, and is it something that I feel like I can really feel challenged and therefore fully engaged in, and that's when the work gets to be the most fun. — Ron Perlman

Once the real you emerges and appears unfettered, naked, and completely in touch with the good, the bad, and the ugly, then you really meet yourself. Then all those things take on a different perspective as well. — Ron Perlman

the pace at which Sean Connery speaks stems from a decision he's made. And every single vowel delivered is with respect for the language. But he delivers it so naturally and with so much humanity that you don't realize that, technically, he is giving a master class in how to deliver a line. — Ron Perlman

"Striking looking." That's a euphemism if I ever heard one. — Ron Perlman

Somebody who doesn't care if they live or die is the most dangerous human being on earth. — Ron Perlman

I've always wanted to have my own studio because this is a way for me to finally take all things that I've always dreamt about and actually put them into action. — Ron Perlman

I've been busy and not busy, and busy is better. I've been busy, but I went through a lot of periods where it was lean for a lot of times. — Ron Perlman

I'm just trying to make up for lost times, and I have total awareness that when the work is coming it doesn't mean it's going to continue to come, so I'm taking advantage of this phenomenal period that I'm in now, to its fullest. — Ron Perlman

I'll walk through fire to do what I do because the movie business, when it's right, is the coolest art form ever invented. — Ron Perlman

You back a big cat into a corner and somebody is going to get bloody. — Ron Perlman

I love to continue to challenge myself and put myself in situations that are slightly uncomfortable. — Ron Perlman

War, war never changes. — Ron Perlman

You start talking about God and a lot of people are going to become very defensive. — Ron Perlman

I've done millions of mediocre movies. I've done way more than my fair share. You do what you gotta do. This is not heart surgery. I'm not curing cancer. I'm just trying to put my kids through school. — Ron Perlman

blessed are the storytellers, because they can bridge oceans, marshal great forces, inspire and instruct, transcend all limits, transform hearts and minds. They can break down barriers and be the common thread for disparate humanities, reaching across distant borders. — Ron Perlman

My self-confidence didn't come from my appearance, it came from other things that I did. But certainly not my appearance. — Ron Perlman

So much of my aesthetic was formed by my dad. — Ron Perlman

I couldn't make it on the swimming team in high school. In fact, I got thrown off the swimming team and was forced to audition for the school play because they had at the audition about 35 girls show up and no boys, so my swimming coach suggested that I might be able to do the drama department more good than I was doing the swimming team. — Ron Perlman

Every job has a unique situational circumstance. — Ron Perlman

I do voicework all the time. — Ron Perlman

You know, I don't read the blogs, or go on the internet, and I really just don't know what people are saying because ... well I guess I'm afraid to. — Ron Perlman

very rarely does change come in the form you imagined it would. When you're in the cocoon you never know what kind of butterfly is gonna come flying out. — Ron Perlman

I love great animation. — Ron Perlman

You can change the circumstances but you can never change man's inner nature. — Ron Perlman

I was working more on a primal, instinctive level. And it just seemed to suit me; it seemed to suit my concentration span, it seemed to suit my personal style of performance, and I have fallen in love with film acting. — Ron Perlman

The things that are celebrated as human decency, true heroism, true self-sacrifice, and with a kind of leadership that was completely iconoclastic during the first half of the twentieth century are nearly forgotten. All of a sudden we started looking inward and becoming obsessed with behavior, idiosyncrasies, human flaws, and all this stuff. Some great accomplishments happened in the second half of the twentieth century, don't get me wrong, but in the process we lost a template of what truly being human looks like. — Ron Perlman

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees. — Ron Perlman

Some of the great characters that I've played had to be transformational. — Ron Perlman

I never direct myself, because I don't like working with me. I would punch me in the mouth if I had to take my direction. — Ron Perlman

We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their defects." In writing this line I meant to say that we must not simply "accept" imperfection when it is revealed to us - we must celebrate it. This, I assure you, is the true sign of friendship. — Ron Perlman