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I wasn't playing Nixon's satirical stick figure. I was playing Nixon the man. As an actor, I felt I had to get to the deeply flawed humanity of the guy.

Harry Shearer

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Harry Shearer
Age: 80
Born: 1943
Born: December 23
Actor
Dub Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Journalist
Musician
Radio Personality
Screenwriter
Television Actor
Voice Actor
LA
California
Harry Julius Shearer
Wasn
Flawed
Humanity
Stick
Guy
Sticks
Actors
Deeply
Felt
Figure
Men
Figures
Actor
Satirical
Playing
Nixon

More quotes by Harry Shearer

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I think the British learn their history through the prism of this gallery of grotesques known as the royals.
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When I was growing up, we learned our history almost as lives of the saints. And it came as a shock, Oh, Jefferson had slaves? It always comes as a shock to us that elevation to the White House didn't somehow cleanse them of all their deep character flaws.
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Music can happen with equal ease as a solo or collaborative venture, it seems to me.
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The hardest work most of us do is maintaining the appearance of normality.
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Nixon's genius was that he was able to portray himself as the toughest of the anti-communists, and yet run on a platform that he had a plan to end the Vietnam War. And, of course, his plan was to prolong it until his second election - but he didn't tell us that then.
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Well Washington DC what are you going to do. They think the capitol steps are the state of the art in comedy. You try to drag them into the 20th century let alone the 21st and they refuse to come with you.
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The theater business is very much about Hey, if you want our big blockbuster at Christmas time, you'll play our piece of crap in April.
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To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will.
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I didn't have a lot of independent film connections. It really took until the digital film revolution came along that I realized that I could do it myself.
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[C. Montgomery] Burns is much purer evil than Nixon was. I think it's the purity of his evil that attracts me as a comic character.
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The first thing you've got to do is know your craft, and then you can do something else with it.
Harry Shearer
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If Nixon were a Republican senator today, he would have been primaried out.
Harry Shearer
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You have to do real acting, not just do a voice.
Harry Shearer
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I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two years.
Harry Shearer
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[The word class has] been excised from the acceptable political vocabulary, except in the limited usage of right-wingers when they accuse liberals of inciting 'class warfare' - a charge that means it's okay for rich people to vote their economic interests but it's not all right to encourage poor people to do so.
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I always used to sit next to Mel Blanc when we'd do the shows. When you have Jack Benny on one side and Mel Blanc on the other, you're not going to go far wrong.
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I think in most cases, if you're with good people, comedy creation happens faster in collaboration. That's how I can tell if it's a good collaboration: If it's faster than me by myself, then it works. If it's slower than me by myself, then I get out of the room.
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For a guy who is always banging on about the masculine virtues, Nixon had this remarkable proclivity for very dainty gestures.
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I've got an odd, negative bond with C. Montgomery Burns. He reminds a lot of people of bosses they've worked for. He certainly reminds me of someone I'm working for.
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The act of getting married, stripped of the necessity to have a secure setting to raise children, seems to me no less grim than registering your emotions with the government.
Harry Shearer