“I have been a violent person…I am a violent person. But I control it. There's a part of me that doesn't like what goes on inside me; so I work at keeping myself under control. I'm not sure that I'm all that happy that I have conquered that violence; it's not a wise thing to alter your personality. But I had to change. I couldn't go around as I was. In those early days, I was a terror. If someone wasn't doing his job properly and I reprimanded him, if he didn't answer properly, I'd quite likely go at him with, "Now listen, you son of a bitch." My background is black Irish, you see. My mother was a violent woman, though my father was just the opposite.”
— excerpt from an interview with Burt Lancaster by Roderick Mann. Sunday Express, London, July 2, 1972.
