James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor and dancer, both on stage and in film, though he had his greatest impact in film. Known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances. He is best remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in movies such as The Public Enemy, Taxi!, Angels with Dirty Faces, and White Heatand was even typecast or limited by this...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth17 July 1899
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
There were many tough guys to play in the scripts that Warner kept assigning me. Each of my subsequent roles in the hoodlum genre offered the opportunity to inject something new, which I always tired to do. One could be funny, and the next one flat. Some roles were mean, and others were meaner.
It was just everyday living. With me, it was fighting, more fighting, and more fighting. Life then was simply the way it was: ordinary, not bad, not good, just regular. No stress, no strain. Of course, no one had much of anything, but we didn't know that we were poor.
My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.
You dirty, double-crossing rat.
I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor. Not until One, Two, Three. In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all sorts of scene-stealing didoes. I came close to knocking him on his ass.
Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.
Outside of my family, the prime concern of my life has been nature and its order, and how we have been savagely altering that order.
I never said, 'MMMmmm, you dirty rat!
My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.
The Postman Always RingsTwice.