Quotes from Robert Osborne

I'm 77. The only reason I'm ever shy about it is that people tend to think of you in terms of what they think that age is. I certainly don't feel any different than I did when I was 35, and my energy seems to be more than it was then.

I was shaped by the heroes in the films I saw, which you always want to emulate and be like. I wanted to be like Alan Ladd, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart.

Doris Day started performing at a young age, had a tough road to success, and once she achieved it delivered the goods 100 percent and brilliantly, always making difficult work look as easy as breathing.

I think there's something about traveling in airplanes all the time that's not the healthiest thing in the world for you.

'The Hollywood Reporter' was always in. You always got great tables. You always got great seats at screenings. You always got treated well if you were at the paper.

My love of movies started when I was 7 years old, living in a small town, going to the movies all the time, and finding the people in the movies more interesting than the people in my small town. Also, at that time, it wasn't that easy to find out about movies.

I grew up in a small town where I went to the movies a lot and fell in love with all these people. I also fell in love with the movie business. So all I saw were actors on the screen so I thought, well, that's what I have to be if I want to be a part of the movie business.

I think Kennedy being assassinated changed the world. That shot changed everything about America, and made us cynical, made people discontent and angry.

When Orson Welles was acting in 'Compulsion,' the director Richard Fleischer let him just take over and direct the courtroom scenes. To be able to see Welles - who knew more about directing than anyone - direct himself and the other actors, it was unbelievable and unforgettable.

There comes a time when even icons, if they choose to do so, should be allowed to enjoy life out of the spotlight.

There's a lot of movies that aren't all about Christmas, or where Christmas isn't the focus, but have that spirit of Christmas in them. I love that sequence in 'Auntie Mame,' where she's in the department store, sewing at Macy's, and she doesn't know how to do anything but fill out a form as 'cash on delivery!'

If they didn't have an Oscar for people to shoot for, all they'd do is be making 'Dumb And Dumber' again and again.

I always felt that Bette Davis was one of the great screen actresses who never really got her due - she won two Oscars, but the last was in 1938, and that was really before all the great work that she did.

I'm very enthusiastic about the Academy Awards because if there were no Oscars, we wouldn't have as many good movies as we do have.

I'd worked for, during one period, for a PR firm, and for a while Rock Hudson was a client of ours, so I knew him well, and I knew when he had AIDS, that he had AIDS, but I would not write about that.

I still think of Columbia as one Rita Hayworth movie a year, or maybe one a year directed by Frank Capra in the '30s. To see how many really outstanding movies Columbia made, and all together, is kind of eye-opening.

I liked 'The Help,' and I love Viola Davis. But I didn't think that film was a great film; I thought that was a very uneven film. I thought the Southern women were so caricatured that it was kind of like 'Harper Valley PTA' or something like that.

I think 'Elf' is funny, with Will Ferrell. That's a great Christmas movie.