Celebrity Robert Mitchum

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Robert Mitchum

Birthday:

6 August 1917

Birth Name:

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum

Height:

185 cm

Biography

No, I don't identify in my mind with criminals, but my exposure to them has helped my understanding. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. Sure. I know the freakers, you know -- the burglars, the uptighters, those creeps who puke or jerk off or something every time they make a score, so you can pick up on their modus operandi.

The single thing I'm grateful for that's come out of the whole [Vietnam] war mess has been the recognition of the need for communication. I've gone sometimes on dangerous waters in the interest of communication because I believe in it. I believe that everyone in the world should at least have the privilege of knowing what's happening all at the same time. One thing I've learned is that the greatest fuckin' slavery is ignorance, and the biggest commodity is ignorance -- the dissemination of ignorance, the sale and burgeoning marketing of ignorance.

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I get along with people very well, really. I do. I do. Really. Every now and then, some guy gets the hots and figures to go home and tell his old lady he just decked that motherfucker Mitchum. Why, she'll shoot him, man! "Robert Mitchum? You stomped his ass? Why, you dirty motherfucker!" Me, I'm easy. I don't go through red lights. I don't steal.

I worked three pictures for 28 days straight. We'd shoot all night at RKO [The Locket (1946)], then I'd report to Undercurrent (1946) from seven in the morning until noon, when I'd be flown to Monterey to work all afternoon with Greer Garson [Desire Me (1947)].

RKO made the same film with me for ten years. They were so alike I wore the same suit in six of them and the same Burberry trench coat. They made a male Jane Russell out of me. I was the staff hero. They got so they wanted me to take some of my clothes off in the pictures. I objected to this, so I put on some weight and looked like a Bulgarian wrestler when I took my shirt off. Only two pictures in that time made any sense whatever. I complained and they told me frankly that they had a certain amount of baloney to sell and I was the boy to do it.

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They could never decide to their satisfaction what type I was. One would say, "He's a heart-broken Byronic." Another would say, "No, he ain't; he's an all-American boy." People began talking about Mitchum-type roles, but I still don't know what they mean. They'd paint eyes on my eyelids, man, and I'd walk through it.

They think I don't know my lines. That's not true. I'm just too drunk to say 'em.

[on Jane Russell] Miss Russell was a very strong character. Very good-humored when she wasn't being cranky.

[on Steve McQueen] He sure don't bring much brains to the party, that kid.

[asked what he looks for in a script before accepting a job] Days off.

[on Sarah Miles] She's a monster. If you think she's not strong, you'd better pay attention.

[on working with Faye Dunaway] When I got here I walked in thinking I was a star and then I found I was supposed to do everything the way she says. Listen, I'm not going to take any temperamental whims from anyone, I just take a long walk and cool off. If I didn't do that, I know I'd wind up dumping her on her derrière.

I only read the reviews of my films if they're amusing. Six books have been written about me but I've only met two of the authors. They get my name and birthplace wrong in the first paragraph. From there it's all downhill.

[1968] The Rin Tin Tin method is good enough for me. That dog never worried about motivation or concepts and all that junk.

[1967] Where are the real artists? Today it's four-barreled carburetors and that's it.

Up there on the screen you're thirty feet wide, your eyeball is six feet high, but it doesn't mean that you really amount to anything or have anything important to say.

Sometimes, I think I ought to go back and do at least one thing really well. But again, indolence will probably cause me to hesitate about finding a place to start. Part of that indolence perhaps is due to shyness because I'm a natural hermit. I've been in constant motion of escape all my life. I never really found the right corner to hide in.

I got a great life out of the movies. I've been all over the world and met the most fantastic people. I don't really deserve all I've gotten. It's a privileged life, and I know it.

[1948] I never will believe there is such a thing as a great actor.

I often regret my good reviews, because there is no point in doing something I know to be inferior and then I find I have come off the best in the film. Wouldn't you find that worrying?

I know production values are better, but are the scripts, are the pictures? The thing is, it's a hell of a lot more work, and I don't see overall where the films are any better, really?

These kids only want to talk about acting method and motivation; in my day all we talked about was screwing and overtime.

People make too much of acting. You are not helping anyone like being a doctor or even a musician. In the final analysis, you have exalted no one but yourself.

Just after we shot Secret Ceremony (1968), lesbianism came in... I'm no damned good as a lesbian.

[on The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969)] How the hell did I get into this picture anyway? I kept reading in the papers that I was going to do it, but when they sent me the script I just tossed it on the heap with the rest of them. But somehow, one Monday morning, here I was. How the hell do these things happen to a man?

[1983] Stars today are just masturbation images.

[his opinion of Method actors Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson] They are all small.

[on four-time co-star Deborah Kerr] The best, my favorite... Life would be kind if I could live it with Deborah around.

How do I keep fit? I lay down a lot.

[asked why, in his mid-60s, he took on the arduous task of an 18-hour mini-series, The Winds of War (1983)] It promised a year of free lunches.

Young actors love me. They think if that big slob can make it, there's a chance for us.

I came back from the war and ugly heroes were in.

I kept the same suit for six years - and the same dialog. We just changed the title of the picture and the leading lady.

You know what the average Robert Mitchum fan is? He's full of warts and dandruff and he's probably got a hernia too, but he sees me up there on the screen and he thinks if that bum can make it, I can be president.

I've survived because I work cheap and don't take up too much time.

Sure I was glad to see John Wayne win the Oscar. I'm always glad to see the fat lady win the Cadillac on television, too.

[his opinion about the Vietnam war, in 1968] If they won't listen to reason over there, just kill 'em. Nuke 'em all.

There just isn't any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.

John Wayne had four-inch lifts in his shoes. He had the overheads on his boat accommodated to fit him. He had a special roof put in his station wagon. The son-of-a-bitch, they probably buried him in his goddamn lifts.

Not that I'm a complete whore, understand. There are movies I won't do for any amount. I turned down Patton (1970) and I turned down Dirty Harry (1971). Movies that piss on the world. If I've got five bucks in my pocket, I don't need to make money that f***ing way, daddy.

You've got to realize that a Steve McQueen performance lends itself to monotony.

[asked what jail was like, after being released on a marijuana possession charge] It's like Palm Springs without the riff-raff.

I never changed anything, except my socks and my underwear. And I never did anything to glorify myself or improve my lot. I took what came and did the best I could with it.

Every two or three years, I knock off for a while. That way I'm always the new girl in the whorehouse.

I have two acting styles: with and without a horse.

Years ago, I saved up a million dollars from acting, a lot of money in those days, and I spent it all on a horse farm in Tucson. Now when I go down there, I look at that place and I realize my whole acting career adds up to a million dollars worth of horse shit.

I never take any notice of reviews - unless a critic has thought up some new way of describing me. That old one about my lizard eyes and anteater nose and the way I sleep my way through pictures is so hackneyed now.

When I drop dead and they rush to the drawer, there's going to be nothing in it but a note saying 'later'.

[on press stories] They're all true - booze, brawls, broads, all true. Make up some more if you want to.

People think I have an interesting walk. Hell, I'm just trying to hold my gut in.

[on his acting talents] Listen. I got three expressions: looking left, looking right and looking straight ahead.

I've still got the same attitude I had when I started. I haven't changed anything but my underwear.

Movies bore me; especially my own.

I started out to be a sex fiend but couldn't pass the physical.

I gave up being serious about making pictures around the time I made a film with Greer Garson and she took a hundred and twenty-five takes to say no.

The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I've spent more time in jail.

Robert Mitchum

Robert Mitchum was an underrated American leading man of enormous ability, who sublimated his talents beneath an air of disinterest. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Ann Harriet (Gunderson), a Norwegian immigrant, and James Thomas Mitchum, a shipyard/railroad worker. His father died in a train accident when he was two, and Robert and his siblings (including brother John Mitchum, later also an actor) were raised by his mother and stepfather (a British army major) in Connecticut, New York, and Delaware. An early contempt for authority led to discipline problems, and Mitchum spent good portions of his teen years adventuring on the open road. On one of these trips, at the age of 14, he was charged with vagrancy and sentenced to a Georgia chain gang, from which he escaped. Working a wide variety of jobs (including ghostwriter for astrologist Carroll Righter), Mitchum discovered acting in a Long Beach, California, amateur theater company. He worked at Lockheed Aircraft, where job stress caused him to suffer temporary blindness. About this time he began to obtain small roles in films, appearing in dozens within a very brief time. In 1945, he was cast as Lt. Walker in Story of G.I. Joe (1945) and received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor. His star ascended rapidly, and he became an icon of 1940s film noir, though equally adept at westerns and romantic dramas. His apparently lazy style and seen-it-all demeanor proved highly attractive to men and women, and by the 1950s, he was a true superstar despite a brief prison term for marijuana usage in 1949, which seemed to enhance rather than diminish his "bad boy" appeal. Though seemingly dismissive of "art," he worked in tremendously artistically thoughtful projects such as Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955) and even co-wrote and composed an oratorio produced at the Hollywood Bowl by Orson Welles. A master of accents and seemingly unconcerned about his star image, he played in both forgettable and unforgettable films with unswerving nonchalance, leading many to overlook the prodigious talent he can bring to a project that he finds compelling. He moved into television in the 1980s as his film opportunities diminished, winning new fans with The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988). His sons James Mitchum and Christopher Mitchum are actors, as is his grandson Bentley Mitchum. His last film was James Dean: Live Fast, Die Young (1997) with Casper Van Dien as James Dean.