Quotes

Everybody in town's a better actor than I am, but none of them can play Ben Johnson.

You know, I'd say that aside from Mr. Ford's [John Ford] help in my career, I'd lay any success I've had to not expecting too much. I never expected to become a star and was always content to stay two or three rungs down the ladder and last awhile. When I do get a little ahead, I see what I can do to help others.

[on leaving Oklahoma for Hollywood, where he became a horse wrangler for Howard Hawks on Le banni (1943)] I'd been making a dollar a day as a cowboy, and my first check in Hollywood was for $300. After that, you couldn't have driven me back to Oklahoma with a club.

[speaking about how his life was affected by winning the Oscar for La dernière séance (1971)] After I won that old Oscar, everybody thought I knew something. I didn't know any more than I did before I won it, but they thought I did.

When I left Oklahoma, I wasn't even sure which direction Hollywood was, but I could ride a horse pretty good. I had no formal education to speak of. I was a cowboy from the time I hit the ground. I knew if a cow weighed 1,000 pounds and bought $10 a hundred, I knew how much that was. But I was fortunate because people accepted my character. I ran my life a certain way. I didn't hobnob with the elites because I didn't do drugs and I didn't drink a lot of whiskey . . . oh, I might take a drink now and then, but you know what I mean.

I can't handle phony people, and there are a lot of them in Hollywood. I've built my life around the principles of honesty, realism and respect, and if the people in Hollywood are so pumped up on themselves they can't deal with that, I say the hell with 'em. I think I've won the respect of some people over there and I think I managed to stay real.

[asked about Sam Peckinpah] Sam was a fatalist. He was a pretty talented guy, but he didn't care much about life, and some of what he did, he didn't care much about the outcome as long as the movie had blood and guts and thunder. He was pretty dingy. I saved his life about a dozen times, I guess. He'd start drinking whiskey and taking pills and he'd go crazy. He'd go into a bar, walk through the place and find the biggest guy there, and pick a fight with him. He was crazy.