|
Kline was named Man of the Year (1998) by the Harvard Hasty Pudding Club
|
|
"In a way Kevin is exactly like Hamlet," says acting coach Harold Guskin, [Kline's] first drama teacher at Indiana University in the late 1960s and still a close friend. "Both as an actor and a person, He always makes the illogical choice. He loves doing exactly what you least expect him to do and making it work. Right from the very beginning, when he quit a good job on [TV soap opera] 'Search for Tomorrow' and didn't have a job for months, he has trusted his instincts. And for good reason." - from "Closet Hamlet" by David Blum, Time, Sep. 22, 1997
|
|
"He's the only guy I know who can go from Jerry Lewis to Shakespeare." - "In & Out" director Frank Oz quoted in The Los Angeles Times, Sep. 14, 1997
|
|
"I've been called absurdly selective or lazy. What was it John Cleese said? I'm the one person who makes Hamlet look decisive. But in fact I don't agonize over things. I don't have more meetings than anyone else or agonize over it more than anyone else." - Kline on his reputation for declining offers of work, The Los Angeles Times, Sep. 14, 1997
|
|
"Musicals were something I never set out to do. It wasn't painful, it wasn't like I really wanted to only do Hamlet, but I wanted to do movies. "Only after 10 years, I thought 'Hmmm. I guess this isn't going to happen. Maybe that's passed me by. Now, maybe I'm just going to do stage.' Then 'Sophie's Choice' happened." - Kline quoted in USA Today, Sep. 12, 1997
|
|
"Kline's not just great - No one else can play tragedy and comedy like he can. He's the only successor to Olivier." - Ian Judge, a director with Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company to The New York Times, Jan. 26, 1997
|
|
"While my father had opera in his background, my mother was and continues to be, the really dramatic theatrical character in our family. She's way larger than life. I think I learned comedy watching my father react to her because you had to have a sense of humor because, well, she's formidable!" - Kline to Parade, Oct. 16, 1994
|
|
"You hear about the difficulty stage-trained actors have when they get in front of a camera, where your energy is restricted from the neck up. It's taken me a while to realize that scale is a personal thing, and that you can play big. Olivier, O'Toole and Brando are just a few of the actors who have taken big chances. One of the differences I think is that if you take a big chance on screen and fail, the medium is more unforgiving." - Kline to The Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1991
|
|
Kline received the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theater from the Shakespeare Theater at the Folger in Washington, DC
|
|
"I like the way it scrambles the whole movie-musical convention. There's something sui generis about it." - Kline on "De-Lovely" to EW, April 21, 2004
|