Charles durning height movie#
Charles durning height plus#

You go on the stage, and you know whether it's happening or not. I would rather do a play because it's instantaneous. I can't count how many of my friends are in the cemetery at Normandy, the heroes are still there, the real heroes. And I was in 60 feet of water with a 60 pound pack on, so I let it all go. We were supposed to be able to walk into shore but they didn't bring us far enough. First guy the ramp went down, the guy fell and I tried to leap over him and I stumbled and we both slipped into the water. I was the second man off my barge and the first and third men got killed. Even the guys who had seen a lot of action before, and this was my first time, they were just as ashen as I was, and I was frightened to death. You're not thinking about anything, you're just thinking about you hope that shell that just went off isn't going to hit this boat. This guy in the boat, he turned to me and he threw up all over me, and I got seasick. My sergeant said 'are you scared, son?' and I said 'yes, I am', and he said 'that's good, it's good to be scared', he said 'we all are'. It's hard to describe what we all went through that day, but those of us who were there will understand. All around me people were being shot at, I saw bodies all over the place but you didn't know if they were alive or dead, they were just lying there. Nobody knew where we were supposed to go, there was nobody in charge, you were on your own. I hit the beach, the guys pulled me in who were already there, I'd lost everything but they said 'you'll find plenty of them on the beach, rifles, helmets, that belong to nobody'. I came up and I didn't have a helmet, a rifle, nothing. I heard an explosion, and I turned around, and his torso was here, and his body was over there. I asked the sergeant 'you want me to go first or you go first?' He said 'you go first, I'll be right behind you'. We got behind this tank to protect ourselves we're holding our own when they called us over to them. A lot of that is released through acting. That place no one knows about - horrifying things we keep secret. There's terror and repulsion in us, the terrible spot that we don't talk about. There are many secrets in us, in the depths of our souls, that we don't want anyone to know about. But they rarely blame the second or third banana. They say: 'He couldn't carry it.' They always blame him.

Charles durning height movie#

If a movie or play flops, you always blame the lead. Of course, I'm not often the top dog, but sometimes it's better not to be top dog, because you last longer. I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director.

I'll go downstairs to get the mail, and when I come back I'll say, 'Any calls for me?'. If I'm not in a part, I drive my wife crazy. It's the love of the theatre - the horror, the heartbreak, the disappointments. When that girl starts singing 'What I Did for Love', it has nothing to do with sex. 'A Chorus Line' is an actor's play about actors.

Charles durning height plus#

Plus you've got to work with the talented beginner too. If you're going to learn anything, you've got to learn from the masters. The thing to do is to keep taking chances. And five or six years later, the critics took note. Five years after that, the public found me. Then it took another five years before the agents and producers noticed me. I was in the business ten years before the actors began to notice me. When people ask me, I tell them I didn't go to school.

I think I learned much of what I know about acting from watching James Cagney movies. James Cagney is probably the reason I became an actor. they're all comics, and they're all great. Right away, when they say 'burlesque,' you think of Bert Lahr, Phil Silvers, Red Skelton. When I first got into this business and told people that I was in burlesque, they immediately characterized me.