Biographie

Robert Quarry

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Présentation

Date de naissance
3 novembre 1925 · Fresno, Californie, États-Unis
Date de décès
20 février 2009 · Woodland Hills, Californie, États-Unis (problème cardiaque)
Nom de naissance
Robert Walter Quarry
Surnom
- Bob
Taille
1,85 m

Biographie

Famille

Parents
Proches

Marque commerciale

Resembles Raiders of the Lost Ark villian Paul Freeman (or actually, vice versa)

Anecdotes

His personal life was fraught with life-threatening incidents. He had a cancer scare in 1965. In the 1970s he was the victim, as a pedestrian, of a drunken driver and suffered severe facial injuries which required a long recovery period. In 1982, outside his North Hollywood apartment, he was beaten and robbed. The muggers broke his knees, ribs and cheekbone. He suffered his first heart attack as a result.
Director/producer/writer Fred Olen Ray, director of many low-budget independent films, contacted Robert in 1987 while he was recuperating in a wheelchair and used him in over a dozen films.
Joined the US Army Combat Engineers at age 18 and formed his own theatrical troupe while in the Army. He acted in and helped produce a hit production, "The Hasty Heart" at which President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, were attendees.
Modern sources claim that Quarry "won the role of Teresa Wright's boyfriend in the 1943 Hitchcock classic L'ombre d'un doute (1943)," which is hardly likely since at the time of the filming, Wright was 24 and Quarry was only 17, so apparently he must have had some other secondary role. Whatever it might have been, he was all but cut out, but it did lead to an eventual Hollywood career, as well as lifelong friendships with Wright and Joseph Cotten.
Has an IQ of 168.

Citations

[in a 1974 interview] My motive is quite simple. I want to be able to continue to earn a decent living and earn the respect of the people I work with. I'm a positive thinker. I don't panic, I don't scare. I've seen lots of brilliant actors go under because they panicked, got scared and ran. I'm hard to scare. I'm pleased with myself as an actor and as a human being. If you work hard, you get things and you don't have to thank everyone, although I feel I owe much to Joseph Cotten and his late wife Lenore, Orson Welles, Katharine Hepburn, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne and to Preston Sturges, the very inventive director who died several years ago. If you want to last in this business, you have to give a lot. You can't just take. And you have to have an agent who really cares, and who works for you, like I have.
I always tried to play villains like the heroes. Vincent Price was always playing boogieman things, overdoing stuff, and I was like, "Jesus, Vincent, for once just play it straight." I mean, I played Count Yorga straight, I played "Deathmaster" straight. But Vincent's mannerisms took him over. As an actor you should never allow that to happen. The best villains are the ones who are both protagonist and antagonist.
[on portraying Count Yorga] I enjoyed playing Yorga. The fun of making movies is the fun of getting outside yourself. I had been playing heavies all my life, but they were more real--just with or without a mustache. So it was fun to use some of the--what I hope were--skills I had developed by this time.