Quotes About Fred Astaire

“After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”

— Ann Richards

“Sure he was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything [Fred Astaire] did, .. backwards and in high heels.
From: Frank and Ernest by Bob Thaves, art by Bob Thaves.”

— Bob Thaves

“She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.”

— Anne Fortier

“Peabody wandered off, scanning the entertainment units lining the wall, wondering what it would be like to be able to afford any amusement available: music, art, video, holograms, VR, meditation chambers, games. Play a set of tennis with the latest Wimbeldon champ, dance with a hologram of Fred Astaire,”

— J.D. Robb

“I was asked to act when I couldn't act. I was asked to sing 'Funny Face' when I couldn't sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn't dance - and do all kinds of things I wasn't prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.”

— Audrey Hepburn

“Did any artist ever bring more pure joy to more people than Fred Astaire?”

— Jack Kroll

“My uncle, who was a little more flamboyant, always said the guy who dressed the best was Fred Astaire.”

— Andy Garcia

“I make up cassettes all the time - to take on the road with me - a song from this album, a song from that album. That's the way I listen to music; it's like one of those K Tel things: it's from all over. I listen to Fred Astaire, I listen to African folk music, I listen to Talking Heads.”

— Robert Palmer

“I felt Michael Jackson was inspired a little bit more from the elegance of a Fred Astaire. Michael loved Sammy Davis, Jr. and James Brown and Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. But he wasn't any of those people. To be inspired is one thing, but he made it all his own.”

— Kenny Ortega

“I dug up my dad's old Fred Astaire tapes, and now I find him super-inspiring. He's, like, one of the best dancers.”

— Adam G. Sevani

“Over the years, myths were built up about my relationship with Fred Astaire. The general public thought he was a Svengali, who snapped his fingers for his little Trilby to obey; in their eyes, my career was his creation.”

— Ginger Rogers

“When I was a kid, I loved Nicholas brothers films. It was like skateboarding. Even Gene Kelly: I always preferred him to Fred Astaire, just because he was more athletic, like skateboarding.”

— Harmony Korine

“What I got, unconsciously, from admiring Fred Astaire was that he didn't want what he was doing to look difficult. What was difficult, in my opinion, was making it look so genuine, so effortless. I equally have tried to remain unseen on the screen.”

— Stanley Donen

“I started dancing when I saw Fred Astaire in 'Flying Down to Rio,' at approximately nine years old. Fred Astaire influenced me, more than anything, to be in 'show business.'”

— Stanley Donen

“When Fred Astaire danced, everything in this world was perfect.”

— Stanley Donen

“When I am cast in a movie where I feel that the woman's part is more interesting, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire. They seem to be the most clear actors when working with women.”

— Jack Nicholson

“As a dancer, obviously, we are all inspired by Michael Jackson, and I always looked up to Gene Kelly. He was a bigger version of Fred Astaire, and he was amazing as well.”

— Maksim Chmerkovskiy

“The thing is that my idols have always been the types of guys who could do anything: Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Sinatra, Dean Martin; and when you look up to people like that, you don't accept that you need to be compartmentalised.”

— Justin Timberlake

“Being young isn't about age, it's about being a free spirit. You can meet someone of 20 who's boring and old, or you can meet someone of 70 who's youthful and exciting. I met Fred Astaire when he was 72 and I was 21, and I fell in love with him. He certainly was a free spirit.”

— Twiggy

“Fred Astaire never let you see him sweat, but he sweetened his deceptively casual virtuosity with just enough charm to make it irresistible.”

— Terry Teachout

“I've always had an innate ability to dance, but I'm not as spiffy as those cinema legends like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.”

— John Travolta

“Fred Astaire is my hero. I love him because he was willing to kill himself to make his art look effortless. And because he proved it's possible to be an artist and a good person.”

— Connie Willis

“I grew up with the movies of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and Judy Garland - these are the kinds of shows and the kinds of numbers in shows that I dreamed of being in and doing when I was a kid.”

— Max Von Essen

“Sometimes I take her food from the Iranian restaurant she and Ollie liked-the Sunny Acres kitchen staff is happy to warm it up-and sometimes I bring her a DVD or two. She likes the oldies, like with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I always bring her something, and she's always happy to see me. On her good days she does see me. On her bad ones, she's apt to call me Olivia. Or Charlotte. That's my aunt. I also have an uncle.”

— Stephen King

“I love the old Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly movies; they're so beautiful to look at. It's such a shame we don't make them anymore. Although, I don't know how you could make tap dancing current and topical.”

— Jamie Bell

“Fred Astaire. Not a handsome man. He said himself he couldn't sing. He was balding his whole life. He danced like a cheetah runs, with the grace of the first creation. I mean, that first week. On one of those days God created Fred Astaire. Saturday maybe, since that was the day for the pictures. When you saw Fred you felt better about everything. He was a cure. He was bottled in the films and all around the earth, from Castlebar to Cairo, he healed the halt and the blind. That's the gospel truth. St Fred. Fred the Redeemer.”

— Sebastian Barry

“I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It's kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It's a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.”

— Alan Rickman

“The Fred Astaire movies made a huge impression on me.”

— Anton Du Beke

“I always loved all kinds of music. I would watch musicals a lot as a kid, on TV, watch the Fred Astaire movies. I'd watch 'The Wizard of Oz.' I was a big Jerry Lewis fan, and they'd have these big bands and someone singing - some siren, or some guy singing some gorgeous song. I was always enamored of that style of music.”

— Queen Latifah

“I wish I was born in that era: dancing with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, going to work at the studio dressed in beautiful pants, head scarves, and sunglasses.”

— Catherine Zeta-Jones

“The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an exhibitionist. How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!”

— Anonymous.

“I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced, and he said 'Yes, but it hurts now.' That's exactly it. I can still dance, too, but it hurts now!”

— Dick Van Dyke

“I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that's literally 70 years.”

— Dick Van Dyke

“I studied dancing for 13 years. And loved to dance. Always wanted to dance with Fred Astaire.”

— Lauren Bacall

“No one around me was obsessed with Fred Astaire except for me. It just snowballed, really. I started with tap lessons. When I didn't have tap shoes, I taped nickels on the bottom of my penny loafers.”

— David Hallberg

“I spent an entire evening seated between Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, being charmed from either side. It was pure Hollywood magic.”

— Lorna Luft

“No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.”

— Mikhail Baryshnikov

“I think there's no question that Michael Jackson was the foremost entertainer of his generation; perhaps of all time, arguably, taking the skills of a Sammy Davis, Jr., bringing together the street dance of African American urban culture, joining them to the politics of dance, of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly on that sphere alone.”

— Michael Eric Dyson

“While I was making my solo films, RKO was busily trying to get me and Fred Astaire back together. The studio wanted to capitalize on the success of 'Flying Down to Rio' and realized that the pairing of Rogers and Astaire had moneymaking potential.”

— Ginger Rogers

“I guess the only jewels of my life were the pictures I made with Fred Astaire.”

— Rita Hayworth

“You see, as far as the man's personality goes, there's no one who can touch Fred Astaire. He's unique.”

— Donald O'Connor

“It's nice that all the composers have said that nobody interprets a lyric like Fred Astaire. But when it comes to selling records I was never worth anything particularly except as a collector's item.”

— Fred Astaire

“Fred Astaire represented the aristocracy, I represented the proletariat.”

— Gene Kelly

“If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando.”

— Gene Kelly

“Fred Astaire is the Carioca, the Continental, the very Piccolino of romance.”

— Archie Frederick Collins

“As Gloria Steinem said about Ginger Rogers: She was doing everything Fred Astaire was doing, just doing it backwards in high heels. Well, Southern women are doing and enduring what other women have to do and endure, but (at least until recently) they had to do it in heels and hats and white gloves and makeup and a sweet smile, with maybe a glass of bourbon and a cigarette to get them through the magnolia part of being a steel magnolia.”

— Michael Malone

“I want to do with skates what Fred Astaire is doing with dancing.”

— Sonja Henie

“When I am asked about influences, I always say I bow down to Fred Astaire, because when you look at him dancing you never look at his extremities, do you? You look at his centre. What you never see is the hours of work that went into the routines, you just see the breathtaking spirit and freedom.”

— Alan Rickman

“I am the Fred Astaire of karate.”

— Jean-Claude Van Damme

“[Hugh Jackman is] an Adamantium-laced Fred Astaire.”

— Jon Stewart