Top 50 Bela Lugosi Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I guess I’m pretty much of a lone wolf. I don’t say I don’t like people at all, but, to tell you the truth, I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds.”

— Bela Lugosi

2. “If you are not serious, people will sense it.”

— Bela Lugosi

3. “I will not be tortured, I tear torture out of myself by torturing you!”

— Bela Lugosi

4. “The love-bite, it is the beginning. You will be irresistible.”

— Bela Lugosi

5. “To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious.”

— Bela Lugosi

6. “To win a woman, take her with you to see Dracula.”

— Bela Lugosi

7. “I have never met a vampire personally, but I don’t know what might happen tomorrow.”

— Bela Lugosi

8. “It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed on it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out-and come back for more.”

— Bela Lugosi

9. “The stage is near and dear to me.”

— Bela Lugosi

10. “It is women who bear the race in bloody agony. Suffering is a kind of horror. Blood is a kind of horror. Women are born with horror in their very bloodstream. It is a biological thing.”

— Bela Lugosi

11. “Women have a predestination to suffering.”

— Bela Lugosi

12. “I look in the mirror and say to myself, Can it be you once played Romeo?”

— Bela Lugosi

13. “You can’t make people believe in you if you play a horror part with your tongue in your cheek.”

— Bela Lugosi

14. “I’d like to quit the supernatural roles and play just an interesting, down-to-earth person.”

— Bela Lugosi

15. “It was hell to go through what I went through. I didn’t know I had so many friends. Many people gave a damn about my situation. They helped cure me.”

— Bela Lugosi

16. “I never play without my cape.”

— Bela Lugosi

17. “My body grew hot, then cold. I tried to eat the bed sheets. My heart beat madly. Every joint in my body ached. When I took the cure they took it all away from me.”

— Bela Lugosi

18. “Circumstances made me the theatrical personality I am, which many people believe is also a part of my personal life.”

— Bela Lugosi

19. “I have played Dracula a thousand times on stage and I find I have become thoroughly settled in the technique of the stage and not of the screen.”

— Bela Lugosi

20. “In making theories, always keep a window open so that you can throw one out if necessary.”

— Bela Lugosi

21. “Death, the final, triumphant lover.”

— Bela Lugosi

22. “I studied at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts for four years and emerged with a degree.”

— Bela Lugosi

23. “If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers.”

— Bela Lugosi

24. “I’ll take any story if it’s good.”

— Bela Lugosi

25. “In the studio the director controls the actor’s every move, every inflection, every expression.”

— Bela Lugosi

26. “Every actor’s greatest ambition is to create his own, definite and original role, a character with which he will always be identified. In my case, that role was Dracula.”

— Bela Lugosi

27. “When a film company is in the red they come to me. Always it is the same.”

— Bela Lugosi

28. “In Hungary, acting is a profession. In America, it is a decision.”

— Bela Lugosi

29. “That is different, to have someone think that I am evil when I really am not.”

— Bela Lugosi

30. “Without movie parts I was reduced to freak status. I just couldn’t stand it.”

— Bela Lugosi

31. “Every actor is somewhat mad, or else he’d be a plumber or a bookkeeper or a salesman.”

— Bela Lugosi

32. “There was no male vampire type in existence. Someone suggested an actor of the Continental School who could play any type, and mentioned me.”

— Bela Lugosi

33. “I’ve been using narcotics for 20 years.”

— Bela Lugosi

34. “The screen magnifies everything, even the way you are thinking.”

— Bela Lugosi

35. “I have lived too completely. I think I have known every human emotion.”

— Bela Lugosi

36. “The role seemed to demand that I keep myself worked up to fever pitch, so I took on the actual attributes of the horrible vampire, Dracula.”

— Bela Lugosi

37. “I’ll be truthful. The weekly paycheck is the most important thing to me.”

— Bela Lugosi

38. “Martyrdom was the price of enthusiasm for acting.”

— Bela Lugosi

39. “The former ruling class kept the community of actors in ignorance by means of various lies.”

— Bela Lugosi

40. “It took me years to live down Dracula and convince the film producers that I would play almost any other type of role.”

— Bela Lugosi

41. “The vampire was a complete change from the usual romantic characters I was playing, but it was a success.”

— Bela Lugosi

42. “Of all the roles I’ve done on the stage, I’m partial to Cyrano de Bergerac.”

— Bela Lugosi

43. “The actor depends wholly on himself. He gives his performance in what, to him, seems the most effective manner.”

— Bela Lugosi

44. “Actors were exploited no less by the capitalist managers than they were by the state.”

— Bela Lugosi

45. “A screen actor is compensated in the knowledge that millions will see his performance at one time, where only hundreds will see it on the stage.”

— Bela Lugosi

46. “Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy.”

— Bela Lugosi

47. “To portray a maniac offers a compelling challenge.”

— Bela Lugosi

48. “In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.”

— Bela Lugosi

49. “I enjoy my work. I haven’t been an actor for 30 years without getting pleasure out of the profession.”

— Bela Lugosi

50. “It took several years of hard work in small roles before I attained stardom.”

— Bela Lugosi