Richard Petty

We are excited to partner with TEAM, RADD and NHTSA on this campaign, designed to raise awareness of two major safety issues – impaired driving and seatbelt use. Richard Petty Driving Experience provides the perfect venue for the campaign’s messages and incentives, particularly for reaching young men, who make up the highest risk group for motor vehicle crashes. The collaboration of our staff, NASCAR driver hosts and fans with the celebrities and dignitaries that represent the campaign at Richard Petty Driving Experience is exciting to see.

He was at Richmond from the time I was a little boy. He was one of the originals in PR, in working with the drivers and the newspapers. He was one of the first to realize you don’t just stick up a sign and say we’re going to have a race Sunday. He went out, dug up PR and really got the job done. Any time we ran at Richmond, the place was always full.

These sprint boys weren’t happy with how the sport was being promoted and where it was going, so they asked me if I’d still be interested in helping them, and I am,

If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’!

I closed my eyes, held my breath and then everything went black.

I think they called it ‘sucking up’ to begin with. They finally had to come up with another name.

The celebrity thing… I don’t want to sound as if I absolutely don’t want it because that’s not true. If you’re in the entertainment business, you have to be honest. There’s something alluring about it…

I don’t think I’m very much like anyone else, really. I’m sure there are aspects of other actors that I share, but I don’t see anybody else and go, “Damn, they stole my thing”. I’m me, and I like that there are people who have an appreciation for that.

When I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try and be Elvis. There was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten-year-old. That was all the ambience I got at ten years old…I think!

For a while I was like, “Oh my God, anyone that would release an album as an actor is the biggest fool ever”, but I happened to have sung all my life before I was an actor. Why are musicians allowed to become actors? No one ever gives them flack for that.

I come from the tradition of a big Irish family that loves to sing. I love to perform.

Before you, my life was like a moonless night, but there were stars-points of light and reason. Then you flew across my sky, and there was light. When you were gone, when the meteor had flown over the horizon, nothing had changed, but my eyes had been blinded by the light. I couldnt see the light anymore, and there ceased to be a reason for anything.

I can do anything I want to do really, I might as well.

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend and dogs are a man’s best friend. Now you know which sex has more sense.

[On trying to get out of the part of June Carter Cash in Walk the Line] I called my attorney. My agent. My manager. I said “You know y’all, you’re serious about this? I’m really.. I gotta get out of this. Like can’t they call ‘Leann Rimes’? I mean she’s good.

[when asked if she had ever been asked to “sex it up” a little] I’m more of the down-home – I guess, you know, the good-old girl. Being sexy is kind of funny to me. You know, I can get kind of spunky or I can get tough, you know, that kind of tough, sexy look. But sexy? No, I don’t think so. Just what you see is what you get on me. And it’s never been anything of a sexual nature.

Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.

Think of our government as a body. The IRS is the anus. It’s nobody’s favorite part, but you need that thing working properly or everything goes to shit real quick.

I just want to continue being able to get roles that scare me and make me better and I think I can only grow as an artist if I do things that are scaring me and making me uncomfortable because that’s the only place you’ll learn anything.

I don’t fight for much, but when I fight for something, it’s usually because I think I’m going to be right.

I hope we left you with something to put under your pillow.