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Gene Wilder often said that his job as an actor wasn't to make something funny but to make it real.

Gene Wilder

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Gene Wilder
Age: 83 †
Born: 1933
Born: June 11
Died: 2016
Died: August 29
Actor
Comedian
Diarist
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Writer
Milwaukee City
Wisconsin
Jerome Silberman
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Often
Wilder
Real
Gene
Something
Genes
Make
Actor
Wasn
Actors
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More quotes by Gene Wilder

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[ Zero Mostel] would tell anyone anything, not to be impolite, but he'd show that he wasn't at all afraid of however much money that person [had] or whatever title they had in a company. It didn't scare him. Mel [Brooks] was very much the same way.
Gene Wilder
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My agent at the time, Mike Medavoy, before he became a movie mogul, called me up and said, how about a movie with you and Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman? And I said, well, what makes you think of that? He said because I now handle you and Peter Marty.
Gene Wilder
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To match the shoes with the jacket is fey. To match the shoes with the hat is taste.
Gene Wilder
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I'm in complete remission. I'm alive and well.
Gene Wilder
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Little surprises around every corner, but nothing dangerous.
Gene Wilder
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In fact, [Gene Wilder] had made a hysteric seem considerably less funny in his film debut as a terrified undertaker in Bonnie And Clyde. And neurotics soon became his stock-in-trade, whether he was playing the weird title character in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory...
Gene Wilder
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If you're not gonna tell the truth, then why start talking?
Gene Wilder
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I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.
Gene Wilder
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I want to be an actor, maybe a comic actor but a real actor.
Gene Wilder
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On screen, Gene Wilder could often be summed up as an accident waiting to happen, that frizzy, flyaway hair, the eyes darting this way and that and then something would set him off, Zero Mostel, say, in the movie that made Wilder a star, The Producers.
Gene Wilder
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A lot of comic actors derive their main force from childish behavior. Most great comics are doing such silly things you'd say, 'That's what a child would do.
Gene Wilder
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When people, especially from France, would ask me to talk about or so they could write about New York Jewish humor, I'd say I don't know anything about New York Jewish humor. I know who Zero Mostel was and I know Mel Brooks, but that's about all I could tell you about New York Jewish humor.
Gene Wilder
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I met Mel [Brooks] backstage in Anne's [Bancroft] dressing room. He was wearing one of those pea coats, pea jackets that were made famous by the Merchant Marines, and I admired it and he said, You know, they used to call this a urine jacket, but it didn't sell.
Gene Wilder
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I had improvised a lot in classes and at the Actors Studio, but I never did it in front of the camera.
Gene Wilder
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Which one of us, anywhere in the world, doesn't yearn to be believed when the audience is watching?
Gene Wilder
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I wanted to be an actor. Maybe a comic actor, but an actor. That's what got me into acting was putting on an act, because in life, I wasn't funny and I felt on stage or in the movies, I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
Gene Wilder
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Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?
Gene Wilder
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When you please your mother by doing something, it gives you confidence that you can please other people.
Gene Wilder
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I never thought of it as God. I didn't know what to call it. I don't believe in devils, but demons I do because everyone at one time or another has some kind of a demon, even if you call it by another name, that drives them.
Gene Wilder
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I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.
Gene Wilder