He Said, She Said

I started this posting some time ago.  I have been collecting quotes from the famous and about the famous.  They can be funny, bitchy, sad, mean-spirited and enlightening.  Regardless, I think it's time to wrap it up and send off to you. 

Larry Olivier would talk about the brotherhood or fraternity of actors in front of a group and look through an actor like he was a dirty pane of glass.
      Anthony Quinn

Laurence Olivier is the most overrated actor on earth.  Take away the wives and the looks and you have John Gielgud.
       Oscar Levant

Hollywood was hardly a nursery for intellectuals.  It was a hotbed of false values, it harbored an unattractive percentage of small-time crooks and con artists.
        David Niven
  
The profession of acting does attract many emotionally unattractive people.  More and more I find, as I've often said, if a woman wants to act like a man, why can't she act like a nice man?
       Dame Edith Evans

Perhaps most actors are latent homosexuals and we cover it with drink.  I was once a homosexual but it didn't take.
       Richard Burton

If he'd lived, they'd have discovered he wasn't a legend.
       Humphrey Bogart on James Dean

Goody-goody.  He has cancer.  Serves him right.
        Marlene Dietrich on Yul Brynner

There are two reasons.  First, he never asked me and second, he liked boys too much.
        Alice Faye on why she never married Tyrone Power

Rod Steiger's the worst actor who ever lived.  The very name makes me throw up.  He's so terrible.  He's one of the worst hams. 
       Truman Capote

Miss (Katharine) Hepburn is an acquired taste.  Like Greek olives and Sapphic poetry.
        Hermione Gingold

It wasn't the way I looked at a man... it was the thought behind it.
        Gloria Grahame

I see Miss (Claudette) Colbert has in her post-film, post-prime career returned to the stage.  She is interesting to watch, if not to work with.  Stubborn as a mule.  I once, in a pique of frustration, told her that I'd wring her neck... if she had one.
        Noel Coward

I'm 77 but I'm still beautiful.  I'm not gay though I have very good gay friends.  And I never had to do the casting couch bit, never had to kiss anyone or anything.  I just worked hard and became a superstar.  Now I'm taking it easy.  I don't mind playing gay.  I was Laurence Olivier's lover in Spartacus.
       Tony Curtis who has also admitted to gay affairs in his youth

The casting couch did exist and I did occasionally find myself on it.  Many of us who made a career out of the movies did... many, many more than want to admit it.
        Mamie Van Doren

I always wanted to do a Noel Coward play but I never really got the chance.
      John Wayne (who must have been drunk when he said that)

John Waters says Hairspray is Cats for fat people.  I think John Water is Woody Allen for gay people.
        Robert Downey Jr.

Another rumor is that I made Esther (Williams) give up her career when we got married.  That's a lie.  She was already washed up when we married.
        Fernando Lamas

When Sinatra dies, they're giving his zipper to the Smithsonian.
        Dean Martin

On the surface Donna Reed was sweet and demure.  Inside she was a tough dame.  She had to be.  I never met a successful Hollywood actress who wasn't.
         Mickey Rooney

I have the face of a vulture and the voice of a crow.  If you threw a rock at me, you could kill two birds with one stone.
        Martha Raye

If I am such a legend, then why am I so lonely?
      Judy Garland

Anything I have to say about Susan Hayward you couldn't print.
      Robert Preston

She can't talk.  She can't act.  She's terrific.
      Louis B. Mayer on Ava Gardner

Can't act.  Slightly bald.  Can dance a little.
       A Hollywood producer on Fred Astaire

When Ginger Rogers danced with Fred Astaire, it was the only time in the movies when you looked at the man, not the woman.
        Gene Kelly

It was hard growing up seeing all this press against your mother.  I'd be sitting next to a girl in chemistry class and she'd say, Your mother's a Commie.
       Natasha Richardson, daughter of Vanessa Redgrave

I'm just a hair away from being a serial killer.
       Dennis Hopper

I used to be a little princess.  They used to come and get me in black limousines.  They don't come anymore.
       Jean Seberg, shortly before her suicide

I'm a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius.
       Jerry Lewis

I want my wife barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.
          Steve McQueen

It angers me when I run into women who are totally submissive, completely dependent.  What angers me more is men who like that kind of woman.
          Jessica Lange

She blackens my name and makes me think abortion is a good idea.
          Klaus Kinski on daughter Nastassja

A big bag of wind and the most unctuous man I ever met.
          Montgomery Clift on Burt Lancaster

   
Bob Hope will go to the opening of a phone booth at a gas station in Anaheim provided they have a camera and three people there.
           Marlon Brando

I had practice being a whore.  When I was a young actor starting out in Hollywood, I used to service actresses who were older than me.
          William Holden

He's so square.  He came out of a cubic womb.
          Richard Harris on costar Charlton Heston

Who is that son of a bitch that should say he helped me have a comeback?  That shitheel wouldn't have helped me out of a sewer.
         Bette Davis on Pocketful of Miracles costar Glenn Ford

She's an egotistical little bitch.
          Barbara Stanwyck on Bette Davis

The most difficult and unpleasant star I have ever worked with... she hasn't a grain of gratitude in her.
           Producer Hal Wallis on Shirley MacLaine

I am a bit coarse, a bit low, a bit vulgar and a bit ignorant.  I am also part princess, sophisticated, elegant and controlled.  I appeal to everyone.
           Barbra Streisand

If I could have another mouth grafted onto my face to smoke more, I would.
        Johnny Depp

I'm not fat at all.  I'm just short for my weight.
        Shelley Winters

I remember Tallulah Bankhead telling of going into a public ladies' restroom and discovering there was no toilet tissue. She looked underneath the booth and said to the lady in the next stall, I beg your pardon, do you happen to have any toilet tissue in there? The lady said, no. So Tallulah said, Well, then, Dahling, do you have two fives for a ten?
        Ethel Merman


NEXT POSTING:
Still More Character Actors