I lose things. I am preoccupied. I am misty. Eyeglasses? I go through eyeglasses like tissue.
It became the joke of the neighbourhood. If the umpire ruled me out on a bad call, I'd take the fake eye out and hand it to him.
I love Chicago. It's one of the great cities. I'm crazy about the town. It reminds me of New York when it was at its best, the New York that used to be and is no more. I love the architecture, the old stuff and the new stuff.
Before we ever had a script or anything, I was attracted to the idea of playing a character that housed within himself two opposing traits.
Acting is like golf: analysis leads to paralysis.
Oh, I was some efficiency expert. On my first day, I couldn't find my own office in Hartford and wound up in the Post Office.
You thought the stage, you thought Broadway: that was the pot at the end of the rainbow. The idea of being in Hollywood was like going to the Moon or Mars.
If your mind is at work, we're in danger of reproducing another cliche. If we can keep our minds out of it and our thoughts out of it, maybe we'll come up with something original.
My father's whole life was work. He had a retail store in Ossining, New York, and I mean, he was down there at 6:15 every morning. The store didn't open until 9, but he hadda be down there. That's all he knew.
Sometimes I was in school plays, but only when the kid they'd originally picked got sick and they asked me to substitute.
Strange thing, this television.
I did do my own stunts.
When I go see a basketball game, I'm always in the front row. I always have a table at a restaurant; I never have trouble getting a taxi.
I've been asked a few thousand times how much of Columbo is Falk and vice versa.
If I'm a guy reading a newspaper, and I hear this actor who I know gets great seats at basketball games, and he's complaining about being typecast, I think, 'Hey man, count your blessings.'
I hate to talk about typecasting, because being typecast as Columbo ain't cancer.
In the beginning, when you're acting in amateur theater and off-Broadway, it was unheard of that anyone else would get your costume. And it was important to get a good costume. You put time into that.
