- I am frequently told that my films don't make money. Since I have averaged one film a year for 30 years--some of them expensive ones--I can only conclude that somebody is making money.
- Films can illustrate our existence . . . they can distress, disturb and provoke people into thinking about themselves and certain problems. But NOT give the answers.
- Film is a dog: the head is commerce, the tail is art. And only rarely does the tail wag the dog.
- The productiveness of the director-actor relationship depends on the degree to which the actor trusts the director. Unless the actor feels he can safely risk everything he has to give without making himself ridiculous he won't try. He'll play safe until he knows the director will not let him make a fool of himself.
- [on Ginger Rogers] Ginger Rogers was one of the worst, Red-baiting, terrifying reactionaries in Hollywood.
- Once it's finished and been exposed to an audience, I very seldom can sit through a film of mine again. Almost never.
- [1979 comment on Mia Farrow] It is difficult to gauge a star's breaking point, but Mia and I could not have gone on as we had begun. Fortunately, there was no need to. She is shrewd. Her instincts are perfect. Once she had the idea, she was a rewarding working partner.
- I don't think there is any business in the world which is self-styled an "industry"--because it is only the producers and directors who insist on calling the film a "business" or "industry"--where people so cavalierly hire specialists at vast prices only to devote themselves to hampering the work of the specialist they've hired.
- [on being a victim of the Hollywood blacklist] Without it I would have three Cadillacs, two swimming pools and millions of dollars, and I'd be dead. It was terrifying, it was disgusting, but you can get trapped by money and complacency. A good shaking up never did anyone any harm.
- [on directing Paul Muni in Stranger on the Prowl (1952)] By this time [he] was terribly neurotic and probably ill. He was absolutely petrified at the idea that he might be associated with a Communist or somebody who was going to be blacklisted. And Muni, I regret to say, for all those people who admire his work, and the results of his work are frequently admirable, is precisely the kind of actor that I cannot stand, that I cannot work with. He listened to the sound of his voice. He was interested in the superficial aspects of his part in great detail: how the character looked, how he would move, what his gestures were, what his clothes were. But what the hell he felt, or was, did not interest him. At least, that is my opinion.
- He, my grandfather, was called Joseph Walton Losey. My father was called the same, number two, and I was called the same, number three, and I was determined to break this. When my first son was born I gave him the name of Gavrik with *no* middle name.
- [on Tennessee Williams] He's a delightful man, and we became very close, but he was good for me for only three to four hours a day, what with drugs and drink, and when he was too far under, he was terribly abusive.
- [on The Romantic Englishwoman (1975)] There is nothing in the world Glenda Jackson can't do. She's a very good actress, absolutely professional, and for me totally inaccessible. And a bore to work with. Michael Caine I found an absolute delight.
- [on working with Jeanne Moreau] Absolutely marvellous. Every suggestion she took and used and extended and refined. I like her very much. There was a period after Eva (1962) when I felt a bit betrayed by her, but she and I have a kind of permanent love which came out in that film.
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