Lauren Bacall
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.Collection: Marriage
I figure if I have my health, can pay the rent and I have my friends, I call it 'content.'Collection: Health
I am not a has-been. I am a will be.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Movies
Movies are great fun and wonderful when they're good. But you never get to see them till six months after they're finished. So you never get a sense of whether they're really well liked or how good they are. And you don't really know what the finished product is going to be like, because it's a director's medium.Collection: Movies
We live in an age of mediocrity.Collection: Age
A famous love story is hard to maintain when you both live in the spotlight.Collection: Famous
Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.Collection: Imagination
I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.Collection: Age
Patience was not my strong point.Collection: Patience
In actual fact, I've never been one, even from childhood, to kind of analyze myself very much.
I've always felt that work - learning from people who know more than I know - is what keeps you going.
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.
Film is not a woman's medium. If you weren't the hottest kid in town, men stayed away from you.
My feeling about the movies is that most of them are terrible. If you don't have a decent script and a decent director, forget it.
I always wanted to work with Spencer Tracy, which never happened, although I knew him well. And I never worked with Cary Grant.
I'm a big fan of Daniel Day-Lewis. He's a marvelous actor. He stands alone, I think.
For my peculiar face, I look best when I look as though I'm not wearing make-up.
You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind.
I used to dream of being other places, other people. It was an escape for me.
Acting is a life of rejection.
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?
I'm not tough, and I never have been. I suppose over the years I've built up kind of a veneer to protect myself because I have functioned on my own for a long, long time, and I have never had a lot of flunkies preceding me to clear the way.
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 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 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.
Stupidity is not my favourite thing; I cannot deal with it.
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.
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 happen to watch public television more than anything else. I'm also a news junkie, so I watch a lot of CNN.
I like to work with really good professional people - anyone with real talent.
A woman isn't complete without a man. But where do you find a man - a real man - these days?
Legends are all to do with the past and nothing to do with the present.
You learn to rise above a lot of bad things that happen in your life. And you have to keep going.
I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.
When a woman reaches twenty-six in America, she's on the slide. It's downhill all the way from then on. It doesn't give you a tremendous feeling of confidence and well-being.
I am essentially a loner.
My definition of a star is someone who really lasts for a very long time.
You can't acquire a voice. Either you have it, or you don't.
Stardom isn't a profession, it's an accident.
They're guys who want to screw around all the time, which interests me not at all. God knows we've done that, been there, and we don't want to do that any more.
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'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it... I'm liberal. The L word!
Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life.
It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially.
The biggest misconception people have about me is that I'm in control of every situation. I'm rarely in control of any situation.
Find me a man who's interesting enough to have dinner with and I'll be happy.
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 don't have an entourage. In fact, I have no live-in help.
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.