Top 35 Billy Campbell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The kind of people that love ‘The Rocketeer’ are the kind of people that love good storytelling and innocence and a better world, so to speak, so they’re almost always nice people to bump into.”

— Billy Campbell

2. “Oh, I’m nerdy about science fiction and fantasy and graphic novels and reading, and I’m nerdy about board games. My favorite board game is a board game I’m working on right now. It’s a game of Napoleonic era naval warfare, and it’s going to be fun.”

— Billy Campbell

Featured in: Reading Quotes, Fun Quotes

3. “To me, the AMC brand is great storytelling – they call it slow-burn storytelling.”

— Billy Campbell

4. “I sailed a bit as a child, but it wasn’t until I was around 40, when I was halfway through Patrick O’Brian’s ‘Master and Commander’ novels, that I had the sudden epiphany that I had to go sail on a square-rig ship.”

— Billy Campbell

5. “Vancouver is one of my favorite places on earth. It’s gray and rainy there a lot of the time, but for some reason, even though it’s gray and rainy, I feel like it’s a sunny day.”

— Billy Campbell

6. “If I ever get married, I’d like to pick a place so hard to reach that only a few people would turn up-like the North Pole. A destination wedding weeds out all the people who might potentially get their noses out of joint, so only the troupers would be there.”

— Billy Campbell

7. “I can’t say that I haven’t done some bad acting in my time. I have. Usually that involves what we actors call ‘indicating,’ when you twirl your mustache.”

— Billy Campbell

8. “I’ve done some things that have been quite interesting, but as grateful as I am for having been on ‘Dynasty,’ it was just so cheesy. That’s half the reason it was so much fun for people to watch, but it’s not so fun to have to say those lines.”

— Billy Campbell

Featured in: Fun Quotes

9. “I shampoo only once a week or so, with tree tea oil shampoo. And when I slap moisturizer on my face – just some stuff I bought in the grocery store – I pile it through my hair.”

— Billy Campbell

10. “Most sailing ships take what they call trainees, who pay to be part of the crew. The Picton Castle takes people who are absolutely raw recruits. But you can’t just ride along. You’re learning to steer the ship, navigation; you’re pulling lines, keeping a lookout; in the galley you’re cooking.”

— Billy Campbell

11. “The South Downs of England reminded me a bit of my Old Virginia homeland.”

— Billy Campbell

12. “I’m not a big fan of CGI. I’m not a fan at all, unless they use it in a way that doesn’t call attention to itself.”

— Billy Campbell

13. “So many movies are so formulaic because you’ve got to get it done in an hour and a half. On a TV series, that’s where the really interesting stuff can happen.”

— Billy Campbell

14. “Aside from what it teaches you, there is simply the indescribable degree of peace that can be achieved on a sailing vessel at sea. I guess a combination of hard work and the seemingly infinite expanse of the sea – the profound solitude – that does it for me.”

— Billy Campbell

15. “I don’t really collect the mementos. I do steal books off of sets. If there’s a library on the set, you can bet that I’ll steal away with a book or two.”

— Billy Campbell

16. “I don’t have any complex plans for playing a character. I think all I try to do is not make too many bad guy faces and not ever try to seem too good. I just try to put it in the middle somewhere.”

— Billy Campbell

17. “I grew up 60 minutes way from Richmond, in Charlottesville, Virginia and, as a child, I was obsessed with the Civil War. I used to do re-enactments and all that stuff.”

— Billy Campbell

18. “The mood was terrible. You could see it in everybody’s eyes. The body language was just defeated. When they put me in I was hoping I could give us some energy and try to bring us back.”

— Billy Campbell

19. “I would make a horrible politician, because I wouldn’t enjoy my work.”

— Billy Campbell

20. “The feeling of being at sea has put me in touch with who I am to a greater degree than if I had been on land all these years. So, in a roundabout way, I imagine it does inform my acting.”

— Billy Campbell

21. “To me, if I’m reading a fantastic story or I go on a nice first date and I have a wonderful time, I’m not gonna complain because it didn’t work out. I’m gonna go on a second date.”

— Billy Campbell

Featured in: Reading Quotes

22. “The network wants you to make a thing that’s just a stand-alone episode, so you never get any character or continuity. This is one of the ways in which television can actually be good, and even better than the movies, because it gives you a chance to tell a long story.”

— Billy Campbell

23. “I would love to see a sequel to ‘The Rocketeer.’ I’d love to see that! I don’t know that I would be in it. I may be a little long in the tooth to play ‘The Rocketeer.’ But I would love to be a part of that in some form or fashion.”

— Billy Campbell

24. “Many who wave American flags also practice discrimination on the basis of race. Many who wave American flags practice anti-Semitism. We think that betrays the fundamental ideals of our democracy.”

— Billy Campbell

25. “If you were to ask my agent, they would confirm this: I’m drawn to locations. What really drew me to ‘The 4400,’ aside from the fact that it was sci-fi, was the fact that it was shot in the city of my dreams: Vancouver.”

— Billy Campbell

26. “Everything about acting is a challenge. I’m self-conscious. You couldn’t do anything to cause me to be more self-conscious than to stick a camera in my face and have 60 people standing behind it, waiting for me to perform.”

— Billy Campbell

27. “I always know exactly where my stories take place, which gives me something certain so I can use my imagination for the other stuff. I worry though, who wants to keep reading stories about Kalamazoo?”

— Billy Campbell

Featured in: Reading Quotes

28. “Once something is well-written, then everything else is gravy.”

— Billy Campbell

29. “A great deal of my battle, as an actor, is to widdle away the things that make me self-conscious and try to trick myself into not being self-conscious.”

— Billy Campbell

30. “I think it would be lovely to see some features on a disc of ‘The Rocketeer,’ with some reminiscing. I think that would be dynamite.”

— Billy Campbell

31. “When I first came to Hollywood, I used to dream of doing films and escaping television.”

— Billy Campbell

32. “The only thing better than going to Pitcairn in the first place, is going again.”

— Billy Campbell

33. “For me, the experience of making the show is very much like being in a novel. I enjoy getting the new script. I make a cup of tea and I read it the same way I would read a book, with the same amount of joy.”

— Billy Campbell

34. “I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don’t play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy – you just play a person.”

— Billy Campbell

35. “I almost always do things that I like, in some form or fashion. Every once in awhile that means that I don’t think the script is any good and I don’t have any trust in the people, but the film is shooting in Sri Lanka, or somewhere like that, so I’m going.”

— Billy Campbell