Top 100 Astaire's Quotes
#2. From Fred Astaire I learned discipline and hard work.
Dirk Benedict
#3. Did any artist ever bring more pure joy to more people than Fred Astaire?
Jack Kroll
#4. I inherited the knowledge that sometimes (talents) not only skip a generation, but sometimes run screaming from it. Ironically, it was the singing non-ability that helped feed my love of laughter.
Fred Astaire
#5. I have never had anything that I can remember in the business - and that includes all the movies and the stage shows and everything - that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like some of the small-time vaudeville, because we weren't going on and getting better. Aside from that, I didn't dislike anything.
Fred Astaire
#6. If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando.
Gene Kelly
#7. Sure he (Fred Astaire) was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did,..backwards and in high heels.
Robert Thaves
#8. When Fred Astaire danced, everything in this world was perfect.
Stanley Donen
#9. In dealing with a girl or a horse, one lets nature take its course
Fred Astaire
#10. The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style.
Fred Astaire
#11. I've always had an innate ability to dance, but I'm not as spiffy as those cinema legends like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.
John Travolta
#12. I spent an entire evening seated between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, being charmed from either side. It was pure Hollywood magic.
Lorna Luft
#13. If it doesn't look easy it is that we have not tried hard enough yet.
Fred Astaire
#14. The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.
Fred Astaire
#15. No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#16. If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement.
Fred Astaire
#17. Astaire never thought of what he was doing as balletic, but Kelly was always trying to dance with women on points. And his choreography is so showy and flashy. He always looks self-satisfied to me.
Matthew Bourne
#18. When I am cast in a movie where I feel that the woman's part is more interesting, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire. They seem to be the most clear actors when working with women.
Jack Nicholson
#20. My uncle, who was a little more flamboyant, always said the guy who dressed the best was Fred Astaire.
Andy Garcia
#21. I felt Michael Jackson was inspired a little bit more from the elegance of a Fred Astaire. Michael loved Sammy Davis, Jr. and James Brown and Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. But he wasn't any of those people. To be inspired is one thing, but he made it all his own.
Kenny Ortega
#23. Astaire was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#24. When I am asked about influences, I always say I bow down to Fred Astaire, because when you look at him dancing you never look at his extremities, do you? You look at his centre. What you never see is the hours of work that went into the routines, you just see the breathtaking spirit and freedom.
Alan Rickman
#25. Sure he was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything [Fred Astaire] did, .. backwards and in high heels.
From: Frank and Ernest by Bob Thaves, art by Bob Thaves.
Bob Thaves
#26. I don't remember anybody ever pointing me out as a dancing prodigy, but I played a not bad second base.
Fred Astaire
#27. (reporter interviewing Broadway dancer Tommy Tune
'Do you think that greats like Fred Astaire possessed some kind of magic?'
(pause)
'No. Magic possesses them'.
Tommy Tune
#28. Being young isn't about age, it's about being a free spirit. You can meet someone of 20 who's boring and old, or you can meet someone of 70 who's youthful and exciting. I met Fred Astaire when he was 72 and I was 21, and I fell in love with him. He certainly was a free spirit.
Twiggy
#29. I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced, and he said 'Yes, but it hurts now.' That's exactly it. I can still dance, too, but it hurts now!
Dick Van Dyke
#31. Oh, God! That boy moves in a very exceptional way. That's the greatest dancer of the century.
Fred Astaire
#32. I love the old Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly movies; they're so beautiful to look at. It's such a shame we don't make them anymore. Although, I don't know how you could make tap dancing current and topical.
Jamie Bell
#33. But I do nothing that I don't like, such as "inventing" up to the arty or "down" to the corny. I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the "let's be artistic" attitude. I know that artistry just happens.
Fred Astaire
#34. I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that's literally 70 years.
Dick Van Dyke
#35. I dug up my dad's old Fred Astaire tapes, and now I find him super-inspiring. He's, like, one of the best dancers.
Adam G. Sevani
#36. It's nice that all the composers have said that nobody interprets a lyric like Fred Astaire. But when it comes to selling records I was never worth anything particularly except as a collector's item.
Fred Astaire
#37. When you're experimenting you have to try so many things before you choose what you want, and you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion.
Fred Astaire
#38. I often take a brand-new suit or hat and throw it up against the wall a few times to get that stiff, square newness out of it.
Fred Astaire
#39. I can't rely upon sex and violence to sell my books
Libi Astaire
#40. I don't want to be the oldest performer in captivity ... I don't want to look like a little old man dancing out there.
Fred Astaire
#41. I grew up with the movies of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Judy Garland - these are the kinds of shows and the kinds of numbers in shows that I dreamed of being in and doing when I was a kid.
Max Von Essen
#42. This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.
Fred Astaire
#43. I just told my agent to forget all other projects for me. I was waiting for Audrey Hepburn. She asked for me, and I was ready. This could be the last and only opportunity I'd have to work with the great and lovely Audrey Hepburn and I was not missing it. Period.
Fred Astaire
#44. I am bit sending messages with my feet. All I ever wanted was not to come up empty. I did it for the dough and the old applause.
Fred Astaire
#45. As a dancer, obviously, we are all inspired by Michael Jackson, and I always looked up to Gene Kelly. He was a bigger version of Fred Astaire, and he was amazing as well.
Maksim Chmerkovskiy
#46. Slippery stages were the terror of my life.
Fred Astaire
#47. Oh, there's no such thing as my favorite performance. I can't sit here today and look back, and say: "Top Hat was better than Easter Parade or any of the others". I just don't look back, period. When I finish with a project, I say: "All right, that's that. What's next?"
Fred Astaire
#48. Fred Astaire never let you see him sweat, but he sweetened his deceptively casual virtuosity with just enough charm to make it irresistible.
Terry Teachout
#49. Don't just walk through the flames. Get your Fred Astaire on and DANCE through them. Joy is around everywhere, even when the night falls hard.
J.R. Ward
#50. Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.
Roger Ebert
#52. The thing is that my idols have always been the types of guys who could do anything: Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Sinatra, Dean Martin; and when you look up to people like that, you don't accept that you need to be compartmentalised.
Justin Timberlake
#53. I don't like top hats, white ties, and tails.
Fred Astaire
#54. I was asked to act when I couldn't act. I was asked to sing 'Funny Face' when I couldn't sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn't dance - and do all kinds of things I wasn't prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.
Audrey Hepburn
#55. I'm just a hoofer with a spare set of tails.
Fred Astaire
#58. I started dancing when I saw Fred Astaire in 'Flying Down to Rio,' at approximately nine years old. Fred Astaire influenced me, more than anything, to be in 'show business.'
Stanley Donen
#59. What I got, unconsciously, from admiring Fred Astaire was that he didn't want what he was doing to look difficult. What was difficult, in my opinion, was making it look so genuine, so effortless. I equally have tried to remain unseen on the screen.
Stanley Donen
#60. Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.
Gene Kelly
#61. I make up cassettes all the time - to take on the road with me - a song from this album, a song from that album. That's the way I listen to music; it's like one of those K Tel things: it's from all over. I listen to Fred Astaire, I listen to African folk music, I listen to Talking Heads.
Robert Palmer
#62. Fred Astaire was a more formal, trained dancer who loved waltzing and only danced with the girls.
Leslie Caron
#63. I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#65. I wish I was born in that era: dancing with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, going to work at the studio dressed in beautiful pants, head scarves, and sunglasses.
Catherine Zeta-Jones
#66. Compositionally I always wanted to be like Fred Astaire.
Morton Feldman
#67. I don't make love by kissing, I make love by dancing.
Fred Astaire
#68. I just put my feet in the ground and move them around.
Fred Astaire
#69. [Hugh Jackman is] an Adamantium-laced Fred Astaire.
Jon Stewart
#70. Of course, Ginger was able to accomplish sex through dance. We told more through our movements instead of the big clinch. We did it all in the dance.
Fred Astaire
#72. When I was young, I ran to see Astaire and Rogers, Huston, Lubitsch - they were formative for me. I also read 'Flash Gordon' when I was 6, but if I were still reading it when I was 16, I'd have been an imbecile.
Lina Wertmuller
#73. Do it big, do it right and do it with style.
Fred Astaire
#74. I have no desire to prove anything by dancing ... I just dance.
Fred Astaire
#75. No one around me was obsessed with Fred Astaire except for me. It just snowballed, really. I started with tap lessons. When I didn't have tap shoes, I taped nickels on the bottom of my penny loafers.
David Hallberg
#76. I just put my feet in the air and move them around.
Fred Astaire
#77. There's an old Fred Astaire movie where the stage becomes bigger and deeper and more complex. Moments like that really did impact on me and influence me.
Kenny Ortega
#78. I guess the only jewels of my life were the pictures I made with Fred Astaire.
Rita Hayworth
#80. Dancing, as Fred Astaire said, is next to ditch-digging. You sweat and you slave and the audience doesn't think you have a brain in your head.
Ann Miller
#81. The unpadded shoulders, the three-buttoned long and boxy coat, the too-short, thin pants, and the thin ties with striped buttoned shirts in dark colors-well, I suppose this may go very well with some personalities but it's not for me. To me, all such look like TV producers. Maybe they want to.
Fred Astaire
#82. Fred Astaire told me things I will never forget. Gene Kelly also said he liked my dancing. It was a fantastic experience because I felt I had been inducted into an informal fraternity of dancers, and I felt so honored because these were the people I most admired in the world.
Michael Jackson
#83. The Fred Astaire movies made a huge impression on me.
Anton Du Beke
#84. When you have a Dancing partner, there's always gonna be a moment where the girl's gonna cry, Ginger didn't do that. But, most every other girl I've worked with have cried because they said "aah, I can't do it" and I have to go "Yes, you can, Shut up!" and they do do it.
Fred Astaire
#85. When a clumsy cloud from here, meets a fluffy little cloud from there, he billows towards her. She scurries away, and he scuds right up to her. She cries a little, and there you have your showers. He comforts her, they spark! That's the lightning. They kiss........Thunder.
Fred Astaire
#86. You see, as far as the man's personality goes, there's no one who can touch Fred Astaire. He's unique.
Donald O'Connor
#87. Dancing is a vertical interpretation of a horizontal intention.
Fred Astaire
#88. When Ginger Rogers danced with Astaire, it was the only time in the movies when you looked at the man, not the woman.
Gene Kelly
#89. Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained..
Fred Astaire
#90. This is what I understood by it: that for Astaire the person in the film was not especially connected with him.
Zadie Smith
#91. I had some ballet training but didn't like it. It was like a game to me.
Fred Astaire
#92. Wrap up the 20th century; Fred Astaire is gone.
Jack Kroll
#93. And that love that wrinkles your nose touches my foolish heart.
Fred Astaire
#94. What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It's too hard to face.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
#95. I studied dancing for 13 years. And loved to dance. Always wanted to dance with Fred Astaire.
Lauren Bacall
#96. We attend to his later performances as a dramatic actor with respect, but watching the nondancing, nonsinging Astaire is like watching a grounded skylark.
Fred Astaire
#97. People think I was born in top hat and tails.
Fred Astaire
#98. Fred Astaire is my hero. I love him because he was willing to kill himself to make his art look effortless. And because he proved it's possible to be an artist and a good person.
Connie Willis
#99. I'm really influenced by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly.
Cris Judd
#100. Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.
Fred Astaire
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