“I have played Dracula a thousand times on stage and I find I have become thoroughly settled in the technique of the stage and not of the screen.”

It took several years of hard work in small roles before I attained stardom.

I studied at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts for four years and emerged with a degree.

It was hell to go through what I went through. I didn’t know I had so many friends. Many people gave a damn about my situation. They helped cure me.

I look in the mirror and say to myself, Can it be you once played Romeo?

I’ll take any story if it’s good.

The role seemed to demand that I keep myself worked up to fever pitch, so I took on the actual attributes of the horrible vampire, Dracula.

I will not be tortured! I tear torture out of myself by torturing you!

I never drink… wine.

To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.

There was no male vampire type in existence. Someone suggested an actor of the Continental School who could play any type, and mentioned me.

Of all the roles I’ve done on the stage, I’m partial to Cyrano de Bergerac.

I never play without my cape.

My body grew hot, then cold. I tried to eat the bed sheets. My heart beat madly. Every joint in my body ached. When I took the cure they took it all away from me.

If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.

Every actor’s greatest ambition is to create his own, definite and original role, a character with which he will always be identified. In my case, that role was Dracula.

People, chained by monotony, afraid to think, clinging to certainties… they live like ants.

I love being on stage, I love being able to tell a story, I love the fact that the audience listens and laughs at it. It makes me happy, and it’s what I live for.

I once fell through a hole in the stage.

I warm up at home. I hit the stage, I’m ready, whether it’s rehearsal or anything.

Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.

I’m doing the shows. The stage is my canvas; I’ll put whatever up there for the visible eye.

I can’t perform without the mask or be seen without it on stage, or else it’ll distract from the whole persona.

This is where you see the truth of entertainment, because it is not edited. You see it on stage as it is happening. Even if we fall down or forget our words, it’s a part of live entertainment.

George Perles at Michigan State was the first coach that gave me responsibility as far as being a coordinator. I learned a lot from that experience.