The five stages of an actor’s career, according to Ricardo Montalbán
1. Who is Ricardo Montalbán?
2. Get me Ricardo Montalbán.
3. Get me a Ricardo Montalbán type.
4. Get me a young Ricardo Montalbán.
5. Who is Ricardo Montalbán?
Author: Keith Humphreys
Keith Humphreys is the Esther Ting Memorial Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University and an Honorary Professor of Psychiatry at Kings College London. His research, teaching and writing have focused on addictive disorders, self-help organizations (e.g., breast cancer support groups, Alcoholics Anonymous), evaluation research methods, and public policy related to health care, mental illness, veterans, drugs, crime and correctional systems. Professor Humphreys' over 300 scholarly articles, monographs and books have been cited over thirteen thousand times by scientific colleagues. He is a regular contributor to Washington Post and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Monthly, San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian (UK), The Telegraph (UK), Times Higher Education (UK), Crossbow (UK) and other media outlets.
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I remembered seeing much the same joke on John Amos’ IMDb page (Roots, Good Times).
Montalbán used the joke in 2004; it seems to date to 1960.
I first heard it from Rod Steiger back in the 70s. I think it has more to do with getting too old for the kind of roles an actor made his reputation with .
…thus further attesting to the greatness of Paul Newman.
I don’t know who this quote started with, but it was used a long time ago of the Washington insider John R. Reilly. See http://peterlevine.ws/?p=5547
This is reminiscent of Goldie Hawn’s statement that there are three stages to an actress’ career:
1. Hot babe
2. District attorney
3. Driving Miss Daisy
Actually, credit for that probably should go to Paul Rudnik, who wrote the screenplay for The First Wive’s Club. Unless it was inthe original novel. In any event, a great line, and still true.
Thus further attesting to the greatness of Paul Newman, who was in his fifties when he played Michaerl Gallagher in Absence of Malice, in his sixties when he won his Oscar for playing Fast Eddie Felsen, and almost EIGHTY when he played John Rooney in The Road to Perdition.
There’s apparently one more stage, for those who deign to watch current movies:
“Get me a white Ricardo Montalban.”
I heard Jack Elam say that about the career of a Hoolywood “character actor”. Onviously his own name instead of Montalban’s. Who thought of it first?
Who was Jack Elam (yes, he has reached that stage, in fact he died in 2003)? Usually he featured in westerns (like Once Upon a Time in the West as a hatchet-faced, unshaven heavy with a “lazy eye” (a real one!), also in TV series (like Bonanza?. He ended up parodying himself.
Poor Ricardo. The only thing I reme
Poor Ricardo. The only thing I remember him in was e series of commercials for Infinity automobiles. Sic transit……