A famous love story is hard to maintain when you both live in the spotlight.
Legends are all to do with the past and nothing to do with the present.
I put my career in second place throughout both my marriages and it suffered. I don't regret it. You make choices. If you want a good marriage, you must pay attention to that. If you want to be independent, go ahead. You can't have it all.
When I was a kid, it was Bette Davis. She was my idol. I used to cut school and sit in the back of the theater; of course, I would have snuck in because I couldn't afford a ticket.
I finally felt that I came into my own when I went on the stage.
I called my business manager in California and said, 'Sell all of my stock' - what little of it I had - and it's the only smart financial move I ever made.
Film is not a woman's medium. If you weren't the hottest kid in town, men stayed away from you.
I used to dream of being other places, other people. It was an escape for me.
Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life.
I don't sit around thinking that I'd like to have another husband; only another man would make me think that way.
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.
I wasn't brought up as a society girl to go to balls and be a debutante and marry the social set and money and go to parties. No one in my family lived like that. And I never wanted to live like that. I was brought up to believe in work. I always wanted a career. Always.
I've always felt that work - learning from people who know more than I know - is what keeps you going.
What is the point of working all your life and then stopping?
Men need to feel important. They feel better when they're with younger girls or unknown girls.
I studied dancing for 13 years. And loved to dance. Always wanted to dance with Fred Astaire.
I am essentially a loner.
I am not a has-been. I am a will be.
I don't look in the mirror; don't like what I see; never have. I am not my idea of a beauty. Never was. This is not false modesty. I've just never been enamoured of my face, which of course is magnified umpteen times on screen.
In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of publicity.
I would hate now to be married. It does occur to me on occasion that, if I fall and hit my head, there will be no one to make the phone call. But who wants to think about that disaster, I'd prefer not to.
A man's illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he loves you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy.
I loved reading Grimm's fairy tales and Hans Christian Andersen, and I loved to dream about other worlds and other lives. Maybe that has something to do with having an incomplete family, being an only child. All I know is I loved to pretend, and all that was in tandem with my wanting to be an actress.
I remember my oldest son, Steve, saying to me once, 'I don't ever remember seeing you with an apron on.' And I thought, that's right, honey, you did not. That was his concept of what a mother should be.
You learn to rise above a lot of bad things that happen in your life. And you have to keep going.
The big rule is that you must never get mixed up with a married man - never even look sideways at another woman's fella. Boy, I really was terrific at obeying that rule, wasn't I?
For my peculiar face, I look best when I look as though I'm not wearing make-up.
I suppose there are times when I can't believe that I've lived the way that I have and done the things that I've done. Life's a joke anyway. It's all ridiculous. It's all so short.
I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives - you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them and all that.
It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially.
When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise.
My mother was the greatest example to me of anyone I've ever known. She didn't have an easy life. I adored her. She worked hard all her life, and she was the one who set my values. She was quite an amazing woman, although she wasn't tough at all.
That was my original dream, anyway, to be on stage. I think the stage is an actor's place because actors, it belongs to you.
There were times, sure, I wanted my career to go better. But once it starts to go downhill, you can never get back, or only to some degree.
It was Howard Hawks who changed my life.
Find me a man who's interesting enough to have dinner with and I'll be happy.
You can't acquire a voice. Either you have it, or you don't.
Acting is a life of rejection.
I adored 'Breaking The Waves,' so when Lars von Trier wanted me in 'Dogville,' I was beside myself with joy. He works in a way that nobody I've ever worked with works.
You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks.
I was this kid, and I was scared to death of all these pros around me... My head would shake, and my hands would shake, and I discovered if I kept my head down and looked up, my head would not shake, so I started to do that when I could, when it was appropriate in a scene.
I don't have an entourage. In fact, I have no live-in help.
I never believed marriage was a lasting institution. I thought that to be married for five years was to be married forever.
When everything happens to you when you're so young, you're very lucky, but by the same token, you're never going to have that same feeling again. The first time anything happens to you - your first love, your first success - the second one is never the same.
I hope I'm thought of as not just a showbiz personality, but as someone who has lived a life and who has hopefully made a contribution to something along the way - someone who is a human being as well as an actress.
I don't consider myself a great actress. I'm just trying to stay alive, actually. I think I'm good, and I've learned a lot, certainly, mostly in the theater. I've been sloughed off movies for years. But what can you do? That's life.
I figure if I have my health, can pay the rent and I have my friends, I call it 'content.'
