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I was miscast in that production [of Mother Courage and Her Children] ... but it was with Anne Bancroft, whose boyfriend at the time was Mel Brooks, and that made my - I can't say my day, it made my life, in a way.

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
Courage
Mother
Children
Anne
Made
Brooks
Way
Boyfriend
Time
Production
Life
Productions
Whose

More quotes by Gene Wilder

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For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius!
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On stage or in the movies I could do whatever I wanted to. I was free.
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Where is fancy bred, in the heart or in the head?
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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.
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With Mel [Brooks], only one time and that was later on during Young Frankenstein - never with Zero [Mostel] and never with Mel except I was writing every day, and then Mel would come to the house and read what I'd written. And then he'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, yeah, OK. But we need a villain or we need whatever it was.
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Great art direction is NOT the same thing as great film direction!
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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[ 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.
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I'm in complete remission. I'm alive and well.
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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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.
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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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If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it...Just be real and it will be funnier
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 was so afraid to feel free to enjoy my own life if my mother was sick and suffering everyday of her's. I didn't think I had the right.
Gene Wilder
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[Gilda Radner] died in '89, and I got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2000. I've just passed the five-year mark and I'm now what you call - well, it's called complete remission, but I'm cured. I'm fine.
Gene Wilder
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My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.
Gene Wilder
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I like - it's not that I want to be someone different from me, but I suppose it partly is that. I love creating a character in a fantastical situation, like Dr. Frankenstein, like Leo Bloom, a little caterpillar who blossoms into a butterfly. I love that.
Gene Wilder
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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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I had improvised a lot in classes and at the Actors Studio, but I never did it in front of the camera.
Gene Wilder