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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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Here's a guy [Richard Nixon] who had no gift for small talk, never liked to be around strangers, was physically awkward, and he goes into the one business that calls for ease with strangers and a gift for small talk.
Harry Shearer
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The last president we had was the smartest guy anyone could remember and he did the dumbest thing anyone has ever seen in the White House so go figure.
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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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.
Harry Shearer
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I was never into candy and games and clowns.
Harry Shearer
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My parents didn't want me to be a regular in a series. I was a working actor from time to time but they thought was a little too much being a star of a series. They wanted me to have a slightly more normal childhood.
Harry Shearer
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Music can happen with equal ease as a solo or collaborative venture, it seems to me.
Harry Shearer
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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.
Harry Shearer
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I would come back to public school for usually about half the year. It was actually better for me to be out of school a lot, because I was two years younger than everybody, which is a bad situation, socially.
Harry Shearer
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To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will.
Harry Shearer
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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
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I think the British learn their history through the prism of this gallery of grotesques known as the royals.
Harry Shearer
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Anybody who says that having the public recognize them and relate to the work they do is irritating should get into another line of work. You're in this business for people to know what you do and like it.
Harry Shearer
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I have a very strong visual memory of the first time I made him laugh. That was remarkable. I was like, Oh, God, I just made Jack Benny laugh.
Harry Shearer
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I am one of those people who thrive on deadlines. Nothing brings on inspiration more readily than desperation.
Harry Shearer
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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.
Harry Shearer
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You know, radio was a really easy way to do the shows. You'd come in, do a read-through, there'd be a few rehearsals, then you'd come the night of the show and do it in front of the audience and then go home.
Harry Shearer
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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.
Harry Shearer
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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.
Harry Shearer
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Privilege has its own way of seeing the world. It's not about the kind of people they are it's about the situation they're in.
Harry Shearer