Jewish American actresses

"We did long for the pitter-patter of little feet, so we decided to buy a dog. Cheaper, and… get more feet."

"I love being married, I do. It's so great to find that one special person that you want to annoy for the rest of your life."

"Well, the old theory was "marry an older man because they're more mature". But the new theory is "men don't mature — marry a young one"."

"My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives."

"Whenever I date a guy, I think, "Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?""

"My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married, and I didn't want him to."

"Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be."

"My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head."

"I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry."

"To me, life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside."

"[One of my friends] was in labor for 36 hours. (I don't even want to do anything that feels good for 36 hours.)"

"Envy the kangaroo. That pouch setup is extraordinary; the baby crawls out of the womb when it is about two inches long, gets into the pouch, and proceeds to mature. I'd have a baby if it would develop in my handbag."

"I don't even know how this word came into being: "aerobics". I guess gym instructors got together and said, "If we're going to charge ten dollars an hour, we can't call it 'jumping up and down'.""

"Nobody is really happy with what's on their head. People with straight hair want curly, people with curly want straight, and bald people want everyone to be blind."

"Why are women wearing perfumes that smell like flowers to attract men? Men don't like flowers. I have a great idea for a scent that will attract men — how about "New Car Interior"?"

"I had teeth that stuck out so far, I used to eat other kids' candy bars by accident."

"Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."

"It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get. It's really crazy, isn't it? We get to live, then we have to die. What we put into every moment is all we have… What spirit human beings have! It is a pretty cheesy deal—all the pleasures of life, and then death."

"While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die—whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness."

"A company producing a television commercial was looking for child dancers. … It was a commercial set in the fifties, and a young family broke into dance. I was the son; I had a sister, a father, and a mother, who was played by Gilda Radner. Gilda had not yet been hired for Saturday Night Live (in fact, Saturday Night Live didn’t exist yet). It was a four-day shoot, and I, like every other human being who met her, fell in love with Gilda. And on the last day of the shoot, we said our goodbyes in the parking lot. I cried like a baby. My whole family came to pick me up, and upon seeing me crying, my brothers gave me a new nickname to replace Twinkletoes. I was hereby called Sucky Baby, because of the emotion I had displayed upon my cruel separation from Ms. Gilda Radner, who became known in my house as “your girlfriend.” I was Sucky Baby for ten years."

"Just because you donate sperm does not make you a father. I don't have a father. I would never give him the credit or acknowledge him as my father."

"Last night Alexis got his script for Angel. I was like, "Oh, I would have been getting a Buffy script right now.""

"I love the shock factors and that Michelle is just OK with every aspect of herself, especially the sexual side."

"No, I don't think they're obsessive, they're just dedicated."

"I just don't feel the need to swallow all the time, I only do it because I have to, because, like, saliva's gross or something, but I don't see it that way. It's just spit, what's the big deal? I really don't care."

"I put out an ad in the classifieds: ‘Wanted, superhero. I’m a damsel in distress’."

"Actually, I believe in the third season, one of the characters says, "Three hundred and something", which is the number of days from that point that I would appear on the show. Which is awesome."

"My meeting with Joss at the beginning of the season was kind of like, "Alright, welcome to the cast, you're a teenager, you're a Key, have fun."

"I'm usually the one who leaves a water bottle on set, because it gets thirsty under those bright lights."

"If you’re not falling, you’re not training hard enough."

"I never had a stage mother, which is probably one of the reasons why I’m still doing this."

"I've always felt that kids are really smart."

"I was always wanting to learn and be one of those actresses who can actually hold a conversation as opposed to standing there looking pretty."

"I feel that in order to truly be an actor, you have to differentiate yourself and your roles."

"I've had experiences before where a director is like, "Yeah, I wanted a blonde." Have you heard of hair dye?"

"How many women do we know who were continually kissed by Clark Gable, William Powell, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy and Fredric March? Only one: Myrna Loy... And to meet whom did Franklin D. Roosevelt find himself tempted to call off the Yalta Conference? Myrna Loy. And to see what lady in what picture did John Dillinger risk coming out of hiding to meet his bullet-ridden death in an alley in Chicago? Myrna Loy, in Manhattan Melodrama."

"I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that."

"Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life."

"You just learn to cope with whatever you have to cope with. I spent my childhood in New York, riding on subways and buses. And you know what you learn if you’re a New Yorker? The world doesn’t owe you a damn thing."

"She's not a legend. She's a beginner. What is this 'legend'? She can't be a legend at whatever age she is. She can't be a legend, you have to be older."

"Nicole and I worked together on Dogville and we were friends when we started this. That laid the groundwork for our fabulous relationship on screen and off."

"When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it's kind of a sickness."

"Imagination is the highest kite that can fly."

"The people I've known I must say are extraordinary. When I think about some of them, I can't believe that I knew them all. And I think the reason I knew most of them at the beginning was because they were of Bogie's generation, 25 years my senior, not mine. But they were the most talented people of all."

"I was Betty Bacall always. And Lauren was Howard Hawks... he felt that Lauren Bacall was better sounding than Betty Bacall. He had a vision of his own. He was a Svengali. He wanted to mold me. He wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart got involved."

"Bacall: I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it. Even though..."

"Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a — I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him — I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man."

"Well, his attention span was not long, shall we say."

"I love Nicole. Nicole and I happen to be very great friends. Besides that, the press never get it straight. They do not print what you say... We were in Venice for Birth at the Venice Film Festival. And you know when you have a day when you go from one room to another with the roundtables with about five journalists sitting around at each table throwing questions at you all the time. So in one of these rooms, I'm sitting there. And one of the journalists said, you're an icon and Nicole Kidman's an icon and what do you think about that? And I said, why do you have to burden her with the category? She's a young woman. She's got her whole career ahead of her. Why does she have to be pegged as an icon or as anything? Let her enjoy her time. Don't, you know, suddenly put her in a slot. And that was all I said. The word "legend" never came up. It was "icon.""

"A planned life is a dead life."

"I went to a sneak preview... I was sort of stunned by it, because you don't realize what you've done. I never knew what was going to happen, but they knew. Warners knew, and Howard knew."

"[B]adly, playing the Missouri Waltz, or something."

"That's absolutely one of my most favorite movies, for so many reasons. I fought for that part; I wanted it badly. I took a lower salary, I did everything. Grace Kelly said, "I'll never forgive you for playing that part. It was written for me". She [Kelly] got the prince [Rainier], I got the part."

"He was... a womanizer, he wanted to be in the sack with everybody."

"It's not an old movie if you haven't seen it."

"Her life speaks for itself … She lived a wonderful life, a magical life."

"People said Bacall was 'tough.' She's a pussycat with a heart of gold."

"[I]t was her modelling career that took off before the acting one when she was introduced to the Harper's Bazaar columnist Diana Vreeland by none other than Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg — not just an editor at the magazine but also a former actor who had played the leading role in Carl Dreyer's classic Vampyr (1932)."

"It could be that today's conservative movement remains in thrall to the same narrative that has defined its attitude toward film and the arts for decades. Inspired by feelings of exclusion after Hollywood and the popular culture turned leftward in the '60s and '70s, this narrative has defined the film industry as an irredeemably liberal institution toward which conservatives can only act in opposition—never engagement. Ironically, this narrative ignores the actual history of Hollywood, in which conservatives had a strong presence from the industry's founding in the early 20th century up through the '40s, '50s and into the mid-'60s]. The conservative Hollywood community at that time included such leading directors as Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and Cecil B. DeMille, and major stars like John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Charlton Heston. These talents often worked side by side with notable Hollywood liberals like directors Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and John Huston, and stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Spencer Tracy. The richness of classic Hollywood cinema is widely regarded as a testament to the ability of these two communities to work together, regardless of political differences."

"To be good is to be forgotten. I'm going to be so bad I'll always be remembered."

"The reason good women like me and flock to my pictures is that there is a little bit of vampire instinct in every woman."

"I will continue doing vampires as long as people sin."

"After Theda Barra appeared in A Fool There Was, a vampire wave surged over the country. Women appeared in vampire gowns, pendant earrings, and even young girls were attempting to change from frank, open-eyed ingenues to the almond-eyed, carmine-lipped woman of subtlety and mystery."

"Where I live, nobody who's fourteen is having sex and doing major drugs. And I think if you see it in the movies, you may be influenced by it. I think it's so important to preserve your innocence."

"I don't mean to criticize anyone in any way that I wouldn't criticize myself. I think people should have fun, and have a good time, and enjoy the luck that we have to be lazy and dwell in consumerism. But I think that it's a balance. And our job as actors is empathy. Our job is to imagine what someone else's life is like. And if you can't do that in real life, if you can't do that as a human being, then good luck as an actor.... I just think it's an important thing to engage in the world. And it's just too easy not to in our society."

"It was wonderful playing a young queen with so much power. I think it will be good for young women to see a strong woman of action who is also smart and a leader."

"It’s weird that there are so many people at Harvard who do amazing things outside the classroom. It just so happens that people like to watch what I do."

"Everyone has to find what is right for them, and it is different for everyone. Eating for me is how you proclaim your beliefs three times a day. That is why all religions have rules about eating. Three times a day, I remind myself that I value life and do not want to cause pain to or kill other living beings. That is why I eat the way I do."

"Factory farming of animals will be one of the things we look back on as a relic of a less-evolved age."

"I’ve taught at Harvard, Dartmouth and Vassar, and I’ve had the privilege of teaching a lot of very bright kids. There are very few who are as inherently bright as Natalie is, who have as much intellectual horsepower, who work as hard as she did. She didn’t take a single thing for granted."

"Jerusalem-born actress Natalie Portman has only harsh words for...[Israel's] controversial “nation-state law” passed over the summer formally recognizing the country as a Jewish state despite its large population of non-Jewish Arabs. “It’s racist... It’s wrong and I disagree...”... Portman told the BBC it’s “hard to be from a place” where laws like this are in place. “It’s like your family ― you love them the most and you also feel the most critical.” ...Portman’s critique comes eight months after she backed out of a major Israeli award ceremony in Jerusalem where she was scheduled to receive a prestigious honor. The “Black Swan” actress explained in a statement that she did not want to appear to support Netanyahu... Her statement...said, “Like many Israelis and Jews around the world, I can be critical of the leadership in Israel without wanting to boycott the entire nation.”"

"Israeli-American actress Natalie Portman again lashed at Israeli policies in an interview published in a Palestinian-owned newspaper Thursday, calling the controversial Nation-State Law "racist" and a "mistake." Portman, born Neta-Lee Hershlag in Jerusalem, also told the London-based Al- Quds Al-Arabi that law “oppressed Palestinians.”... The Nation-State Law... defines Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people.” It also drops Arabic as an official language... it has stoked anger among critics who, like Portman, argue that it is racist. Portman said she “doesn’t agree” with the principle of the contentious law. "It’s a mistake… I only hope that we will really love our neighbors and work together," she said."

"I've always been an actor. That's my job — I can be anything you want me to be."

"For so long, I didn't play the object of attention or affection. It wasn't until L.A. Story that anyone cast me in a role that had my sexuality as a point of interest or focus or operation. I just wasn't examined in the same way that a 'pretty girl' would be."

"I didn't think I was going to be a person who other people knew, whose name was recognizable."

"Anything having to do with food is pleasurable for me. Any conversation about food, review of food, story of food, picture of food, thought of food..."

"Just because people don't have money doesn't mean they don't desire the same thing. They should have it, and it should be good."

"I strangely feel better before I go through hair and makeup. Maybe that's just because I feel like me."

"It never grows old, putting on a beautiful dress. For me, it's a great distraction. It's always ridiculous, and it always feels like it should be happening to somebody else."

"My instinct was that it felt personal. It was really about 'We don't like her.' Who were the judges and critics? I would like to ask them, 'What exactly is it that you personally find not sexy about me? Is it my figure? Is it my brain that bothers you?'"

"That's the beauty of this country — we can have different opinions and coexist and be amused by each other and hurt and offended."

"Sometimes the things that come out of my mouth are mortifying."

"I’m a movie star. Can I talk to my entertainment lawyer?"

"As a rule people don’t think other people on drugs are funny. They think they are tragic. They have a point, but I still had the funny."

"Look, I’m not thrilled that perfect strangers get to have an opinion about me or feel like they know me, but I have enough perspective to know they don’t know me, and I do have a life and I don’t live it for other people.… My reality is very different from what everyone read. The problem is because I did get myself in a lot of trouble, I didn’t get to do the kind of work that maybe I should have been doing, so it became confusing who I really am and what I am really about … It’s totally fucking strange to me that people took a lot of that fucking stuff seriously. … It’s not their fault that they don’t know me personally. Who’s got the time?"

"My fault has been honesty and I've been sentenced to a lifetime of independent movies, and that's it. That's how it feels right now."

"Honestly, I'm as rebellious as I used to be and my definition of shaking things up isn't what it used to be."

"I'm not a movie star. I'm an actor, clearly, but at the same time, I don't have anything else going on. My hobbies are movies and going to the Film Forum and sitting there during the day for the double feature. That's my life. My life is music, books and movies, that's all I know. That's all I care about and I mean, as a fourteen year old kid, I was reading Entertainment Weekly and was curious about what was going on and I still read US Weekly. I don't give a shit. The point is that I wish that I had life outside of this, and I think that if this is what I'm doing then at least I want it to be a little bit more interesting or important."

"I guess that is my biggest fear, sort of worrying about the fact that I keep getting more insecure as time goes on rather than feeling more grand with each turn. I feel more and more afraid. When I get my picture taken, I'm convinced it's because I must look terrible and they're going to put it in US Weekly as a joke."

"The audience is equally responsible for making Scary Movie 3 as the studio system is because as long as they continue to go see Fast and Furious 4, they're going to make it. You have to remember that studio heads went to NYU and stuff and film school and they wanted to make great films and were seduced by The Godfather and instead, this is the world that were in."

"The greatest actors never go too far away from their skins when they approach characters … Looking at her past films and even American Pie, you can see why she is a star. She brings elements of herself into all of the work she does. She doesn’t look outside of herself for her roles, she looks inside of herself."

"She’s extraordinary … She is creative and she is free, and most importantly, you believe her. … Her instincts are just like Meryl Streep’s. Natasha Lyonne has that ability — that good, intuitive instinct for the creation of another being in front of the camera … That’s the truth."

"I’ve interviewed actresses before. They smile, struggle to charm, remember not to offend. They shamelessly self-promote and talk about what an honor it is to work with such-and-such, but Lyonne’s a different breed. In the very nicest way possible, she tells me, “It’s not my job to be an appealing famous person for you,” as she takes out a cigarette. She takes her time, holding it unlit. It took her 20 minutes before she even smoked her first one, and I ask if she wants to just light it already."

"I’m happy that you really care But do you really know how scary This is for you and is for me Oh do you know Do you really know Oh Natasha, all I can do Is write a song for you."

"Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience. You step out on the stage and you can feel it is a nervous audience. So you calm them down. I come out before an audience and maybe my house burned down an hour ago, maybe my husband stayed out all night, but I stand there. I'm still. I don't move. I wait for the introduction. Maybe I cough. Maybe I touch myself. But before I do anything, I got them with me, right there in my hand and comfortable. That's my job, to make them comfortable, because if they wanted to be nervous they could have stayed home and added up their bills."

"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?"

"John always said he had three favorite women. Fanny Brice, Carole Lombard and me."

"I’m very, very private; I don’t enjoy talking about myself to strangers...Particularly strangers with tapes going."

"I feel that you reach a certain age and then things start to jell. My sense of self is stronger. I'm getting bolder in my old age. After I hit forty, you couldn't mess around with me so much anymore."

"I was brought up not to be selfish or self-centered. So if you play somebody who isn't so lovable, you can play that person and no one will turn on you."

"[W]hat I do is not mimicry or an impersonation, but more of an assimilation"

"As an actor you can't approach the character with that kind of awareness or it plays as 'I hate myself.' Dottie thought she had a right to her life and that was tricky to play."

"[W]hen I was a kid and I would get upset when people laughed at me when I didn't mean to be funny. I would always hear: 'We're not laughing at you. We're laughing with you.' But I would say, 'I'm not laughing.'"

"Don't ask me about Beverly Hills High School. Everybody hated it. I hated it. Hated it. Hated it. Hated it."

"Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough."

"The dying process begins the minute you are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties."

"I don't like to be my own audience, I find that being my own audience, being in the audience, makes me self-conscious, basically. So I tune in sometimes, with the sound off, to check it out and I back up to it. In the future I will look at it when some time has passed."

"I can't even really tell a joke. I find being funny very hard work. I am always asked about it and I feel guilty saying that, but it's the truth. I love my work but it ain't easy."

"Me, as myself, I don't think I'm particularly funny. But I've noticed that people in my life always have found me amusing. Which, when I was little, really bothered me."

"Mel is sensual with me. He treats me like an uncle - a dirty uncle. He's an earthy man and very moral underneath. He has traditional values."

"How can I believably be a dumb blonde. I'm the furthest thing from it. I am intelligent. I don't mean I have a great IQ. I just mean there's always an intelligence present in what I do."

"What's wrong with musicals now is all the gifted men who've died of AIDS—who would otherwise be here today creating great theater."

"Laughter is a strange response. I mean, what is it? It's a spasm of some kind! Is that always joy? It's very often discomfort. It's some sort of explosive reaction. It's very complex."

"She is one of the most talented people that ever lived. I mean, either in stand-up comedy, or acting, or whatever you want, you can't beat Madeline Kahn."

"All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays."

"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid."

"Which director did I like? I've for gotten which. Some of them were not so nice. When somebody isn't accepted by me, it's complete hate. One director never spoke to me, not even hello in the morning. Mr. Mayer never spoke to me. One day I said, "Mr. Mayer, why don't you ever say hello to me?" He said, "Why should I? You're not my wife." It was only because I wouldn't sleep with him. I didn't know anything filthy went on."

"First he married Joan Bennett, then he married me, then he married Myrna Loy. I had a wonderful first love affair. I like men. Gene Markey was the only civilized man. He used to spit into a spittoon."

"I was at the studio at seven in the morning, putting on an evening gown, but I couldn't wait to get home to my children to be a nurse. What does Ava Gardner know? She never had a child, which is what it's all about. It's the truth!"

"The most horrible whores are famous. I did what I did for love. The others did it for money."

"A writer, a brilliant writer, wants to write the real book about me. He wants to call it The Users—the people who have used me."

"They wanted something cheap and stupid. They wanted something dumb. But I have little shelves in my brain, and it's all there, it's the truth."

"Is that chubby‐faced Austrian kid in Boom Town actually me? Did I really wait on the set (being the newest and having the smallest role) to do my close ups, just to wind up looking like that? Clark Gable, so warm and friendly to the insecure actress … Claudette Colbert, such a lady to me, although much higher in the MGM pecking order."

"Ziegfeld Girl. When I see those infinite stairs in that lavish production number that out‐Metro's even Metro, I break up. The director, Robert Z. Leonard, had instructed me to walk down them regally, with Lana on one side and my dear friend Judy on the other. I was to float with head erect, arms disdainfully away from my body in the accepted Ziegfeld manner, and never, but never, look down to see where I was going. The fact that I couldn't see in the blinding lights, even straight ahead, was small consolation. And so I descended, teetering down what felt like millions of steps, in a glorious Adrian costume encrusted with enough twinkling stars to make Neil Armstrong jealous. Out of camera range, a board was strapped on my back, and part of the headdress was attached to this apparatus. Also out of camera range, my bosom was taped from behind and I felt a little like some religious penitent in the 13th century walking in a torture procession. And so I came, smilingly, my back top‐heavy, and as I paraded gingerly down each stair, I had to dispel thoughts of losing my balance and toppling over headlong down the entire set to the ground miles below—board, tapes, twinkling stars and all …"

"More stairs, only this time it's in Samson and Delilah. Now, I'm ascending them, dragging poor, blinded Victor Mature by the handle of a whip. The set is as gigantically faint‐making as anything Mr. De Mille ever conceived, and every single extra within a 50 mile radius seems to be assembled as I slowly lead Samson to the top, where he is scheduled to pull the two enormous pillars of the temple down around his ears and everyone else's. And do you know what I am thinking as I watch this panoply on my television screen? Quite simply, it is "I can't take another step in those damn forties. high heels! … " And, again, in Samson, in the scene where I look dewy‐eyed while golden coins are poured over my feet as a reward for betraying Samson. Well, Mr. De Mille, whom I got along with beautifully, dragged me out of a sick bed for that one, and the dewy eyes are a direct result of a roaring 104‐degree fever."

"I Take This Woman, with Spencer Tracy. We were seated around a table one day, rehearsing our lines. It was my first Metro film, and little Hedy was learning English, when Spencer turned to me and said, briskly, "Get me a taxi." I obligingly arose and started to walk toward the sound‐stage door, not realizing that it was the next line in the script. He was a great actor, but there were times when he made me cry. He was not precisely my favorite person."

"Come Live With Me, with Jimmy Stewart, one of the sweetest men in the world. I was so happy about this picture; it was my first chance to do a charming, humorous story. Until then, my image was that of an exotic creature. My character name in that movie was Johnny Jones. In H. M. Pulham, Esq., I was tagged Marvin Myles, and in Comrade X I was christened Theodore. Why, I wondered, did they give a supposedly sexy lady such weird names? Ah, Hollywood!"

"Her Highness and the Bellboy. There I am, eight months pregnant, being photographed behind potted palms and in full ball gowns, which fortunately fit the story."

"Clark Gable and I, in Comrade X. Although I never quite understood his sex appeal, I thought he was one of the nicest people I'd met, and a great practical joker."

"Is that actually my voice, singing in The Heavenly Body and My Favorite Spy? You bet it is! You'd be surprised how well you can sing when you're rich!"

"White Cargo. "I am Tondelayo"—and I had to get up with the chickens to have the dark make‐up put on all over my body. I was proud of my authentic African dance, which I rehearsed for weeks, and which gave me splinters in my feet. It was done with a bed showing in the background, and it was so sexy almost all of the scene was cut. How I'd like to own that footage today!"

"Tortilla Flat, with Spencer Tracy, John Garfield and Frank Morgan. John Garfield was wonderful to work with. He later told Life magazine, "I tried to steal scenes from Hedy, Hedy tried to steal them from Frank, Frank tried to steal them from me, and the dogs (Morgan's) stole the show.""

"I win because I learned years ago that scared money always loses. I never care, so I win."

"I was the highest-priced and most important star in Hollywood, but I was "difficult.""

"To be a star is to own the world and all the people in it. After a taste of stardom, everything else is poverty."

"When you see a very beautiful face, it’s stunning, and you yourself become stupefied. So you project your own stupidity onto the person you’re looking at."

"At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall ALL the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer."

"My relationship with my father had been on the proverbial fritz since the time I was fifteen and called the police to report him for child molesting. He had never molested me, but I wanted to have a party that weekend and needed him out of the house."

"I had to feign interest in all this nonsense until I could ask when I could come over and sit on his face. I didn't say that out loud, of course. I never say the things I really want to. If I did, I'd have no friends."

"Are you there vodka? It's me, Chelsea. Please get me out of jail and I promise I will never drink again. Drink and drive. I will never drink and drive again. I may even start my own group fashioned after MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but I'll call it AWLTDASH, Alcoholics Who Like to Drink and Stay Home."

"Obviously, if I was serious about having a relationship with someone long-term, the last people I would introduce him to would be my family."

"Most men would never tell a girl her Pikachu smells like a crab cake. It's just not done. But they would have no qualms about telling their guy friends. Similarly, if you're a guy and you pull your pants down, and the girl you're with immediately starts text messaging her friends, you have a small penis."

"He laid into me with the same gusto as a right-wing political pundit on the O'Reilly Factor defending President's Bush right to vacation six days out of the week."

"The part that wasn't a jackpot was his baseball mound of red pubic hair that looked like it had literally been attached with a glue gun. I couldn't believe how much there was, and wondered how he had never heard of scissors, or--more appropriate for that kind of growth--hedge trimmers. I didn't understand what porn he was watching to not be aware of the trimming that was happening all across the world among his compatriots. I'm not a finicky person when it comes to pubic hair maintenance and I certainly don't expect men to shave it all off, leaving themselves to look like a hairless cat. That's even creepier then than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: A clown in a leg lock."

"It became clear when I got in my car that Persians are only really good for two things. Oil and hummus."

"I want to be the poster girl for engineers and computer nerds."

"What is always overlooked is that although the poor want to be rich, it does not follow that they either like the rich or that they in any way want to emulate their characters which, in fact, they despise. Both the poor and the rich have always found precisely the same grounds on which to complain about each other. Each feels the other has no manners, is disloyal, corrupt, insensitive — and has never put in an honest day's work in its life."

"Elvis' quest led him through the study of all religions from Judaism to Buddhism and the teachings of theosophy with its belief in pantheistic evolution, reincarnation, the mystic the psychic, the spiritual, and the occult — in short, all the Aladdin lamps that lit up the 1960s. But before we roll about with laughter at the spectacle of this young many from the Bible Belt, raised on fundamentalism and comics, though apparently already well versed in polypharmacy — struggling to master the Wisdom of the East, we might pause a moment to note the names of George Bernard Shaw, Louis Lumière, Thomas Edison, Yeats, Havelock Ellis, Maeterlinck, the educator Rudolf Steiner, Krishnamurti, and Gandhi, all of whom had been influenced by or involved in theosophy at one time or another and would, not doubt, have welcomed Elvis with open arms as a fellow traveler in the belief that magic is inherent in us all."

"I'd always prided myself on how unlike my books were from each other in settings and subject matter. But not until late in my career did I realize that a single thread ran through them, that I'd used the same strategy to catch the reader's attention. It is the old Western movie gimmick: A Stranger Comes to Town. I am that Stranger. Together with the reader I will discover what's going on in that town whether it be Paris, London, New York, Sydney, Tupelo, Ferriday — or in a women's federal prison. And eventually we will make sense of it."

"Being with Hemingway meant joining in his elaborate game playing as a necessary mark of respect. Tennessee asked only that you be colorful and that you be honest. Looking back I still find the 50s the most exhilarating decade I've lived through. The only mistake I made then was in thinking it would go on forever. I keep reading it was all Dull Conformity and I wonder where those people were living. Not on my planet. The fact that we had won World War 2 and that we were alive led to a post-war cultural explosion."

"At some point in my life I realized I knew only celebrities, I didn't know any real people. I think it was a master stroke of Fate that in researching the greatest celebrity of them all, I would at last be meeting real people, finding them more extraordinary than celebrities; fascinated by them all and enjoying enduring friendships with some."

"I didn't know Elvis was alive until he was dead. But how many stories are like mine? Until his death August 16, 1977, it was possible to get through a day without hearing his name. Of course I remember all the early outrage he caused but believe me it was easy not to see any of his films. It doesn't mean that music has not always dominated my heart and mind. During the years barren of Elvis I did have my record player on constantly but it was playing folk, blues, and jazz. It was playing Al Jolson, Maurice Chevalier, Billie Holiday, Ethel Merman, and Noel Coward. The human voice raised in song has always been important to me so I include Miles Davis whose trumpet is such an important human voice. Then after his death in London in taxis, on radio and TV I heard nothing but Elvis records and that grabbed my attention."

"Sitting in the impressive high-ceilinged hall, an examiner had just given me the test on my eyes, which I failed again. She was talking to me but I was distracted by a blind man with dark glasses walking at some distance from me, his white cane clattering, echoing as it tap tapped away on the floor. What the examiner was repeating — and these are her exact words — was: "There is no cause and no cure for AMD yet." The dam burst. I began to cry, tears running down my face, sudden, unstoppable, embarrassing. In the restroom, I collapsed. My arms were shaking, my fingers stiffened, froze, and then tingled. My stomach was in an uproar. And I kept crying, knowing that I would never go back to seeing what I used to see. I felt hopeless, defenceless; worst of all, I felt timid. I was crying for my dead self. Up to now I'd been congratulating myself for bearing up so well. Now I realised this was because the ophthalmologists always referred to AMD as a disease. For me it meant there would be a cure. Now I knew there would be no new glasses, no medication, no surgery."

"Ken, the Tot of Destiny, had turned into the Marquis de Sade, and I in response had become a virago."

"It was a hot, peaceful, optimistic sort of day in September. It was around eleven in the morning, I remember, and I was drifting down the boulevard St. Michel, thoughts rising in my head like little puffs of smoke, when suddenly a voice bellowed into my ear: "Sally Jay Gorce! What the hell? Well, for Christ’s sake, can this really be our own little Sally Jay Gorce?” I felt a hand ruffling my hair and I swung around, furious at being so rudely awakened. Who should be standing there in front of me, in what I immediately spotted as the Left Bank uniform of the day, dark wool shirt and a pair of old Army suntans, but my old friend Larry Keevil. He was staring down at me with some alarm. I said hello to him and added that he had frightened me, to cover any bad-tempered expression that might have been lingering on my face, but he just kept on staring dumbly at me. "What have you been up to since … since … when the hell was it that I last saw you?” he asked finally. Curiously enough I remembered exactly."

"I’d made a vow when I got over here never to speak to anyone I’d ever known before. Yet here we were, two Americans who hadn’t really seen each other for years; here was someone from "home” who knew me when, if you like, and, instead of shambling back into the bushes like a startled rhino, I was absolutely thrilled at the whole idea. "I like it here, don’t you?” said Larry, indicating the café with a turn of his head. I had to admit I’d never been there before. He smiled quizzically. "You should come more often,” he said. "It’s practically the only nontourist trap to survive on the Left Bank. It’s real” he added. Real, I thought … whatever that meant."

"I suppose Larry’s "reality” in this case was based on the café’s internationality. But perhaps all cafés near a leading university have that authentic international atmosphere. At the table closest to us sat an ordinary-looking young girl with lank yellow hair and a gray-haired bespectacled middle-aged man. They had been conversing fiercely but quietly for some time now in a language I was not even able to identify. All at once I knew that I liked this place, too. Jammed in on all sides, with the goodish Tower of Babel working itself up to a frenzy around me, I felt safe and anonymous and, most of all, thankful we were going to be spared those devastating and shattering revelations one was always being treated to at the more English-speaking cafés like the Flore. And, as I said, I was very glad to have run into Larry."

"Slowly his eyes left my hair and traveled downwards. This time he really took in my outfit and then that Look that I’m always encountering; that special one composed in equal parts of amusement, astonishment and horror came over his face. I am not a moron and I can generally guess what causes this look. The trouble is, it’s always something different. I squirmed uncomfortably, feeling his eyes bearing down on my bare shoulders and breasts. "What the hell are you doing in the middle of the morning with an evening dress on?” he asked me finally. "Sorry about that,” I said quickly, "but it’s all I’ve got to wear. My laundry hasn’t come back yet.”"

"Maybe because I had been out very late the night before and was not able to put up my usual resistance, but it seemed to me, sitting there with the sound of his voice dying in my ears, that I could fall in love with him. And then, as unexpected as a hidden step, I felt myself actually stumble and fall. And there it was, I was in love with him! As simple as that. He was the first real person I’d ever been in love with. I couldn’t get over it. What I was trying to figure out was why I had never been in love with him before. I mean I’d had plenty of chance to. I’d seen him almost daily that summer in Maine two years ago when we were both in a Summer Stock company. … He was always rather nice to me in his insolent way, but there was also, I now remembered with a passing pang, an utterly ravishing girl, a model, the absolute epitome of glamour, called Lila. She used to come up at week ends to see him. Then I heard from someone that he’d quit college the next winter and gone abroad to become a genius. I’d met him again when I first landed in Paris. He’d been very nice, bought me a drink, taken down my telephone number and never called me. You’re a dead duck now, I told myself, as I relaxed back into my coma. You’re gone. I looked at him, smiling idly. I tried to imagine what was going on in his mind."

"He put his hand over mine, the one with the dead cigarette crumbled in it, and gave me a wonderful smile. "Easy, child, easy. I’m only teasing you. Don’t think I disapprove for Christ’s sake. Live it up, I say. Don’t say no to life, Gorce, you’re only young once.” We were on last name terms, Keevil and I."

"My thoughts were chasing each other all over the place, but nothing seemed to sort itself out. Advice, I thought. Ask his advice. On love? Finance? Career? Better stick to love, I decided, it’s what’s on your mind anyway. And with that my mind went blank."

"The sun shone on: the shade of the awning vanished in the hot, white, shadowless midday. In that blaze of heat I was loving Paris as never before. And there sitting opposite me, stretching himself luxuriously in the sun, his eyes lazily examining his half-empty drink, was Larry, the one I loved the best … sensationally uninterested."

"I stumbled across the Champs Élysées . I know it seems crazy to say, but before I actually stepped onto it (at what turned out to be the Étoile ) I had not even been aware of its existence. No, I swear it. I’d heard the words "Champs Élysées," of course, but I thought it was a park or something. I mean that’s what it sounds like, doesn’t it? All at once I found myself standing there gazing down that enchanted boulevard in the blue, blue evening. Everything seemed to fall into place. Here was all the gaiety and glory and sparkle I knew was going to be life if I could just grasp it. I began floating down those Elysian Fields three inches off the ground, as easily as a Cocteau character floats through Hell. Luxury and order seemed to be shining from every street lamp along the Avenue; shining from every window of its toyshops and dress-shops and carshops; shining from its cafés and cinemas and theaters; from its bonbonneries and parfumeries and nighteries.… Talk about seeing Eternity in a Grain of Sand and Heaven in a Wild Flower; I really think I was having some sort of mystic revelation then. The whole thing seemed like a memory from the womb. It seemed to have been waiting there for me. For some people history is a Beach or a Tower or a Graveyard. For me it was this giant primordial Toyshop with all its windows gloriously ablaze. It contained everything I’ve ever wanted that money can buy. It was an enormous Christmas present wrapped in silver and blue tissue paper tied with satin ribbons and bells. Inside would be something to adorn, to amuse, and to dazzle me forever. It was my present for being alive."

"Judy lived in my hotel. She was just seventeen, and what she was doing in Paris was supposedly chaperoning her younger brother, a fully fledged concert pianist of fifteen, who was studying there with one of the leading teachers. In view of their combined and startling innocence, however, this was a rather useless arrangement. Their last name was Galache, and they were the issue with which the highly unlikely union of a Quaker woman from Philadelphia and a dreadfully dashing Spaniard (now, alas, dead) had been blessed. Naturally their upbringing, up to this point, had been strict and very sheltered. … Judy was so different from me that it was really ludicrous. Whereas I was hell-bent for living, she was content, at least for the time being, to leave all that to others. Just as long as she could hear all about it. She really was funny about this. Folded every which way on the floor, looking like Bambi — all eyes and legs and no chin — she would listen for ages and ages with rapt attention to absolutely any drivel that you happened to be talking. It was unbelievable."

"Ridiculous as the idea may have been for her bluestocking mother to send brother and sister over alone like this, the fact was that Judy was protected as much by her curiosity as by her innocence. And then there was this other thing about her, too. You know all that razzle-dazzle about people being born in Original Sin and all that rot? Well, maybe it’s rot and maybe it isn’t. I mean I wouldn’t slit my throat from ear to ear, just because I’d found out for sure that most people are. But she wasn’t. That was the thing. She simply wasn’t. I’m positive of that."

"There are, I know (it was in our philosophy course in college), at least a hundred different reasons why some particular event takes place. So I thrashed about again trying to find some other truth and in the instant that it flashed through my head, I think I got as close to my raison d’etre as I ever have."

"I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don’t we all anyway; might as well get paid for it."

"I look back in wonder at The Dud Avocado: in wonder at its initial reception and at the many times it’s been reissued — for years it was even republished alongside of every new book of mine that came out. I look back in wonder at the 1950s. The dull conformity of those years as they are generally imagined is something I don’t recognize. I look back in wonder at London in particular, where whole areas destroyed during the Second World War still lay in rubble. But London was in the midst of a renaissance for artists. In literature and playwriting the Angry Young Men were making their splash and new young actors like Richard Burton, Peter O Toole, Albert Finney, and Peter Finch were coming into their own. London was an orderly place where it was safe to take risks. Optimism was the rule of the day and I was there."

"In London, aside from bit parts, I was unlucky in my career but I was lucky in love. There was a theatrical club much frequented by all the young lions on their way up. They all gathered to eat inexpensively and be made blissful by the lethal house cider. It was there I met Ken Tynan, recently down from Oxford, and already the enfant terrible of Britain’s drama critics. Mutually magnetized, we married three months later. I sent a wire to my parents in New York: "Have married Englishman. Letter follows." I was madly in love with him and stepped happily into the Wonderland of his fame."

"Halfway through writing the book, I still had no title. It came wonderfully into being when I complimented my host at a party on his flourishing avocado plant. I said, I’d kept trying and failing with my own avocado pits. Someone said, what you’ve got is a dud avocado, and Ken said, that’s a good title for a novel. I thought, this title is mine, and it was. Ken and I had the same agent, and for a publisher we decided on Victor Gollancz, who was so good with first novels. Wonderfully, he accepted it, but with several caveats. He didn’t like the title. It sounded like a cookbook. He also wanted me to write under my married name. I said no to both. He accepted. He decided it needed a subtitle, "La Vie Amoureuse of Sally Jay in Paris." I said, Oh no, no! He said, this was the first time in his experience that an unknown writer had complained about a book cover. However, he did put on the book’s jacket that the subtitle was the publisher’s. Ken read it in proof and said, "You’ve got a thumping great best-seller here." Curiously, the first thing I felt was relief. I believed him. No one could predict how a play or novel would be received by the public like Ken could. And only then was I set free to let excitement take hold of me."

"The reviews were excellent and the book quickly went into a second printing. Then one night Ken came home and threw a copy of the book out the window. "You weren’t a writer when I married you, you were an actress," he said angrily. Obviously his colleagues had been riding him because of the attention I was receiving. I was shattered. The next day, he said, "I’ve been rereading your book. There’s love on every page." And then he gave me a beautiful red leather-bound copy of it with the inscription: "From the Critic to the Author." Looking at it I felt a pang. I wondered if it was his admission of what I’d done that he had not. To my wonder and, it appeared, his annoyance, the book wouldn’t go away."

"The Big Personalities weighed in. Soon after its publication Irwin Shaw wrote to me praising it. Terry Southern, calling me "Miss Smarts," said I was "a perfect darling." Gore Vidal phoned one morning saying, "You’ve got the one thing a writer needs: You’ve got your own voice. Now go." Ernest Hemingway said to me, "I liked your book. I liked the way your characters all speak differently." And then added, "My characters all sound the same because I never listen." All this, and heaven too. Laurence Olivier told me that now that my book was making a lot of money we could elope and I could support us. The Financial Times ran an item which read, "Such and such stock: No dud avocado." Groucho Marx wrote me, "I had to tell someone how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado.… If this was actually your life, I don’t know how the hell you got through it." When people ask me how autobiographical the book is I say, all the impulsive, outrageous things my heroine does, I did. All the sensible things she did, I made up."

"My success took another road. I complained to Rod Steiger, "The book’s hardly been out and everyone wants to know what I’m going to write next. I mean, don’t I get to rest on my laurels?" In fact I had no idea of writing a second novel. "No," said Rod, answering my question. "Succeeding only means you get another chance to try to do it again." I thought about it, and then Ken said to me, "If you write another book, I’ll divorce you." I sat down and started my second novel and wondered that I knew its beginning and its end. I put it aside to write a play which went on in London.… I went back to my novel and finished it. It was published to good reviews but now there were a couple of stinkers. I tore them up and flushed them down the toilet. I’d become a writer. In 1964 Ken and I got divorced. Well, we did bad things to each other. Now, some three decades later, I look back in gratitude at him: I look back in wonder."

"I don't make the habit of writing to married women, especially if the husband is a dramatic critic, but I had to tell someone (and it might as well be you since you're the author) how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream and guffaw (which incidentally is a great name for a law firm). If this was actually your life, I don't know how on earth you got through it."

"It is the destiny of some good novels to be perpetually rediscovered, and Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado, I fear, is one of them … it bobs to the surface every decade or so, at which time somebody writes an essay about how good it is and somebody else clamors for it to be returned to print, followed in short order by the usual slow retreat into the shadows. In a better-regulated society, of course, the authors of such books would be properly esteemed, and on rare occasions one of them does contrive to clamber into the pantheon … but in the normal course of things, such triumphs are as rare as an honest stump speech. The Dud Avocado is further handicapped by being funny. Americans like comedy but don’t trust it, a fact proved each year when the Oscars are handed out: our national motto seems to be Lord Byron’s "Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter/Sermons and soda-water the day after." To be sure, The Dud Avocado is perfectly serious, but it preaches no sermons, and what it has to say about life must be read between the punch lines. That was what kept Powell under wraps for so long — nobody thought that a writer so amusing could really be any good, especially if she was also a woman — and it has been working against Elaine Dundy ever since she published The Dud Avocado, her first novel, in 1958."

"Her life among the lions on both sides of the Atlantic is not only witty but wise as she brings into focus one husband Kenneth Tynan, one Orson Welles, the one and only Elvis Presley, and not least of all, the lioness herself, surviving all."

"I was so enchanted with the open possibilities and the power of being able to choose my part. Who was the child now? I decided I’d be a Japanese businessman because it would be less predictable. Even when I was alone, I was so filled with excitement and laughter at the thought of my task. This was joyful children’s play!"

"The act of writing the book was painful at times, but it was easier than talking to someone."

"It was the most fun I ever had. I would just laugh between takes. It was fun to be so mean."

"It takes three things to make it in this business: the tenacity of a bulldog, the hide of a rhinoceros and a good home to come home to."

"The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation."

"In your choices lies your talent."

"Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor's search is a generous quest for that larger meaning. That's why acting is never to be done passively."

"The teacher has to inspire, to agitate. You cannot teach acting. You can only stimulate what's already there."

"Your talent is in your imagination. The rest is lice."

"You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick."

"Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little."

"You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring."

"Get a stage tone, darling, an energy. Never go on stage without your motor running."

"Stella is theatrical royalty who instills in her students a sense of the nobility of acting. She dares her students to act, to lift their bodies and their voices, to be larger than themselves, to love language and ideas."

"Stella Adler was much more than a teacher of acting. Through her work she imparts the most valuable kind of information - how to discover the nature of our own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others. She never lent herself to vulgar exploitations, as some other well-known so-called "methods" of acting have done. As a result, her contributions to the theatrical culture have remained largely unknown, unrecognized, and unappreciated."

"What an extraordinary combination was Stella Adler - a goddess of full of magic and mystery, a child full of innocence and vulnerability."

"[Adler] established the value of the actor putting himself in the place of the character rather than vice versa … More than anyone else, Stella Adler brought into public awareness all the close careful attention to text and analysis Stanislavski endorsed."

"The only time you'll see me as a Democrat is when I play Sophia. In the real world I'm a Republican from head to toe."

"Age does not bring you wisdom, age brings you wrinkles."

"I think they look upon me as an old child, because I'm so little."

"Being tiny has been difficult for me in a business that regarded physicality as the most important part of your life."

"People assume that I'm wiser than I am because I'm somewhat successful. Age does not bring you wisdom, age brings you wrinkles. If you're dumb when you're young, you're going to be dumb when you're old."

"Too many of you, my friends, are dying. Now it's time for me to do my part and help you."

"I can’t pretend to have worked my way up through adversity. I need the money not for food like other people, but to prove that I’m worth something. Jaws freed me to discover that a successful movie didn’t make a damn bit of difference to my life."

"It was a really interesting experience for me because, like I said, I had never seen a horror film. It was a very physical role. Wes was so specific and clear about what he wanted, such a good captain of a ship. He was very respectful, funny and smart. We were all so young making that movie, I think we were the near the same ages as his children at the time, and he was just so good with us, kind, supportive, and nurturing."

"I was actually really lucky to be a part of this iconic franchise and that my role is so iconic. By the way, these are things that never entered my consciousness. For one I was so young, and two I had no idea and did not predict the future for that movie. I’m so grateful for it and honored. I mean there’s crazy things like that role have been shown on the Oscars multiple times and also Wes and I were hanging in their director’s guild, that big poster of us for years. Things like that I’m honored and flabbergasted by. It’s fantastic and I’m very thankful because so much of my career flowed from that. It’s still mind-boggling to me!"

"I have to find the right part of myself and put it into that character. I feel like everyone has a full deck of cards and I just have to pull the right card for that character. The more comedic roles come easier to me though because I see myself as a silly, easy-going person."

"When I was younger and started acting, I wasn't good at sports and didn't have any other special talents. Acting was my after-school activity. I never planned on growing up and becoming an actor. I always wanted to go to school and become a veterinarian so I think when I got older and suddenly realized that it was my passion, it was just a natural moment. I never felt pushed. My family has always supported me completely and kept me grounded. I never got lost in child Hollywood actor weirdness."

"I love watching amazing actors and actresses that you can't take your eyes off of because everything they are doing -- even if it is just twiddling their thumbs or scratching their eye -- it's just interesting. That's why I love this job and that's why this industry came around. People are fascinating and we want to watch them."

"There is a strong wave of Jewish vegetarians and there is a pretty large movement, if you’re in a progressive synagogue and an environmental-friendly community, to only serve vegetarian. That’s happening more and more. You know in the Old Testament Adam and Eve are vegetarians, and in Judaism there is a strong indication that we are responsible for each other and for our planet. So some of us also make the choice to be vegan as an environmental statement. … We have a tradition that goes back thousands of years about how to treat animals as best we can. Factory farming didn’t exist thousands of years ago, much less a hundred years ago. So I think it’s very interesting that as archaic as some people think traditional Judaism is, we are still trying to stay current with what is going on."

"[What inspired you to go vegetarian at age 19?] A taste aversion stopped my eating meat, then my deep love and respect for animals started informing more and more of my decisions. I had an innate sense of wanting to be vegan, but I needed more information. The change was gradual, which let me think through every step. I was still eating dairy when my first son was born; he couldn't tolerate my breast milk, and I realized I had a dairy allergy. So, it kept evolving. I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and that did it."

"I recently became vegan because I felt that as a Jewish lesbian, I wasn’t part of a small enough minority. So now I’m a Jewish lesbian vegan."

"I had a lot of changes in my life since I turned 40. In fact, even since I turned 50. I became a vegetarian. I have never felt better in my life. I have more energy, I'm so much more alert. I lost 20 pounds, that's right! I really really recommend going vegetarian whatever time in your life. Peace begins on your plate. I'm Carol Leifer and I'm a vegan."

"I take very good care of myself. Growing up as a dancer, you know your body so well, you know what to do to overcome something. … I was raised really, really healthy, pretty much vegetarian and a very clean lifestyle, I don't smoke, I don't drink. I'm more addicted to the things that make me feel good — endorphins after working out."

"I became a vegetarian at 15. I was never a big meat eater — I was always picky. I was raised in a kosher home, and if you're raised with a food restriction, it's not that difficult to have another kind of food restriction. … At some point, I had a dream that I was eating chicken. But in the dream, I understood that it was actually miniature human legs and arms. My brain was connecting muscle and bone to another animal. Once I had made that connection, it just wasn't something I wanted to eat."

"Vegetarianism is a really important part of what we need to do to help the environment. The meat industry is really toxic to the environment. The cattle industry — besides the fact that there's a lot of cruel things happening — the manure is extremely toxic. We just need to pull back as a culture as much as we can."

"It’s been my great fortune to be surrounded by people that have reminded me of how important process is, not outcome. When you’re an actor, or really an artist of a collaborative form, you have so little control of the outcome. And if you are only focused on that...it won’t turn out well. If you’re focused on the outcome, chances are you’re focused on people’s perceptions of the outcome—how much money something makes, how it looks, rather than how it feels. And I think that has been the most valuable—one of the most valuable—lessons I’ve learned is to really appreciate, recognize, and practice the process, not the outcome."

"I think what’s even more powerful is that I feel inspired and encouraged to be a strong, independent person. It’s not that I’m being forced to take a stand. I’m excited for the future."

"There’s an interesting debate that circulates so often, with one side arguing that actors are not activists, Hollywood does not get to be the arbiter of what is right and wrong. And the other side, which is if you have a platform and you don’t use it for good, then what is the point?. No, I’m not a politician, and no, I’m not a news source, but yes, I have people that are following me and I have a voice, and as long as I am doing my best to speak the truth, I’m fine with being on the right side of history! What I’m saying is, you are a part of history; you matter."

"Don't let your flaws define you. Become who you are. Be the best version of yourself. If you're a nice person, just be nice. If you make art to please people or to make people like you—well, it's never going to happen. Before I was an actor, I was a human and a citizen. As an actor, your job is to inhabit different people's lives and honor their feelings and be empathetic to other people's struggles. Just because you are an actor, you are not immediately an activist. But if you do have the platform and the opportunity to speak out, then I think it is your civic duty—especially right now—to be on the right side of history. We only have so long on this planet."

"It was pretty clear to me and to them. I mean, most of my family are artists; my grandma, she’s a painter and she sleeps during the day and paints all night; she has all these health problems but she’s a devoted and committed artist. I was on the phone with her this morning and she said the best thing which was, ‘I’m in my second childhood, I should enjoy it.’ She’s in her 90s."

"Survivors, I believe you. Because I am you. #BelieveSurivors #StopKavanaugh #timesup ✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽"

"You are not weak. You are brave. One of the bravest I know. Speaking your truth, a person living at the intersection of multiple identities, unapologetically, takes courage. I love you"

"Acting is my life. The profession can break my heart. In fact, it already has several times. But I love it."

"I'm grateful to the [Warner Bros.] studio. They gave me a buildup I couldn't have gotten if I hadn't been under contract. I admit I worked hard. I did around eight pictures in one year. I scarcely had time to get married. I worked up until 7:30 on Strangers on a Train the night we were flying to Las Vegas to get married. That was a Saturday night, and I had to be back at work at 9:30 Monday morning. But I was lucky to have made all those pictures. I got good experience. Then I was off the screen for two years while raising a family. It was fortunate that I had that backlog of pictures."

"I'm either very sweet or very bad in pictures, there seems to be no in-between."

"My happiest 26 days in the movies were spent making the picture Champion. For, though you hear a great deal about teamwork in Hollywood, you almost never see as much of it as we did while shooting this film. Whenever there was a question about a scene, we'd hold a group conference, complete with producer, director and cast, to thrash the matter out. Each suggestion was not only considered but also thoroughly discussed. . . All this was immensely helpful to me in playing the role of Emma, for I was very young in pictures then, and this was quite a different type of role from the few I'd played."

"He surprised me on the second day of shooting by saying, "Do you know that this picture [Champion] is going to make you?" I couldn't believe that but Kirk insisted and even offered to make a bet on it. If I had taken the bet I would have lost, for the role of Emma did more for my career than any other role."

"The scene [in Champion] I liked best was the one on the beach, and apparently a number of fans agreed with me. About half the letters I received asked for a picture of me in the bathing suit."

"Bette Davis was great. I kept blowing my lines in one scene with her because they were so awful to try to say. I finally told the director that and Bette immediately came to my rescue. "She's right," Bette shouted. "This girl is absolutely right." Later she told me, "Ruthie, never forget what you did today. . . never be afraid to fight for what you know is right." And I never did forget."

"I’ve always been fascinated by different accents and dialects. As a kid, I didn’t go out much, so I would spend my time learning how to mimic people. Once I learned how to tape things off the TV, I would oftentimes tape things so that I could mimic them back—standup sets on HBO that I should not have been watching at that age because they were way too R-rated for my eight-year-old brain. I would memorize them and then go and perform them for show-and-tell, and my teachers would call my parents and say that I was doing very inappropriate standup sets. I was a super shy, shy kid, so that was kind of my way of expressing myself—to mimic what I saw on TV. I was a bit of a weird kid, but luckily my parents encouraged it."

"I was a super shy, awkward kid, and performing was a comfortable and joyful way of expressing myself that allowed me the freedom to do so. The passion for acting grew from there. From the time I was little, being on the stage or inhabiting a character was always where I was happiest."

"We’re at an interesting time where women have been told to take the pill is cool, to sleep with whom­ever you want, or wear what you want. But if you’re naked, it can be offensive or sexist in some way. That’s the last step our culture needs to deal with. We have this culture of men, especially, watching pornography, but then offended by a classic nude portrait or photograph, and I’ve never felt that way."

"I dreamed of you for the first time the other night. You were swaddled in a blanket and floating. Your hair was dark brown before it curled and turned blonde, just like your father's. I brought my head down to my clavicle and nuzzled you, melting a little. I told you, or did you tell me that it wasn't time yet? We are waiting for you, wondering who you will be. I've made a habit of Googling strange changes in my body in the off chance they might be connected to your existence. Too much saliva, bleeding gums, muscle pains in the lower abdomen. Every time, no matter how seemingly random, all of these symptoms are correct, connected to the making of you. I'm reminded my body is marching onward without any help from me. There is a quietness that comes with pregnancy, a humbling. I'm listening for you. I'm full of wonder. Mornings and nights, my stomach grows. It's getting colder, an election is coming. I feel you flutter underneath my belly button. I want you to see the world's potential. You feel like the world's potential. I'm driving through Manhattan, looking out the backseat window of my friend's car, studying pedestrians as they move through the city. A man crosses the street in glasses, another jogs in place, his eyes focused ahead of him. I stare at these strangers. Will that be you? I wonder. I'm in the shower, rearranging all the names I'm thinking of for you in my head. I peer down at my belly and say one of them aloud to see if it fits. Water steadily beats against my back. In that moment I can't feel it myself or the space around me. Just you. Hello, I think, is that you? My chest swells and my eyes sting with the thought that one day soon, so very soon, your presence will be real. I close my eyes and try to imagine you moving through the pixelated darkness of my mind's eye. I cannot wait to see who you will be."

"It’s a lot less consistent work, but I think with movies, you get to do such a huge range of emotions as a character, where as TV, you kind of stay on the same page. But I’d be happy with either"

"I try and do as much as I can in terms of giving my time when I have it cause it's like I get to live this life going new places, meeting new people and as hard as it is I mean I get an opportunity that a lot of people don't get to have so when I can do something and lend my time and make people happier or send a message and more people will see because I'm on TV. I mean, that's so key and I think everyone should keep that when there in a position like mine or definitely a position above mine. I mean you gotta give back I've been lucky enough to get so much that I have to give back. I don't know what I would do if I didn't give back so um, all those I mean any organization that's willing to lend time and really help people is so important and so great."

"Seeking out help is never a weakness. Whether that's just phoning a friend or finding a therapist or starting to read up on things on the internet or in books. Sometimes we think that means we can't help ourselves, that it's a bad thing, but it's not. It's just becoming more self-aware, and I think that that's a really amazing gift to give yourself."

"I think the key to a great romcom is to not fight against the genre,” she explains. “The trend more recently has been to apologise, or be snarky, so it’s an anti-romcom.” Out comes that wide smile. “Just lean in and embrace the fact it’s a love story and it’s funny and it’s light. It can still be uber-smart and deal with zeitgeist issues."

"It was difficult to be an actress and have a home and children. My family always came first, and that is something I don’t regret."

"There was no knowledge on my part about his specific actions, but… There was just energy. And that type of sinister, shadow energy cannot be concealed .. When your primary male figure couldn't care less to show up, that can become a theme in your life where you’re trying to fill this gap with these different men"

"My peers and teachers at Cardinal Ritter held up HBCUs as the goal to aspire to, and A Different World, with Lisa Bonet's Cosby Show character off at the fictional Hillman College, was a pop cultural force at the time. I loved watching Whitley, Kimberly, Freddie, and Dwayne Wayne. They made college seem like a dream that was within reach for me."

"I've danced my whole life and I really just enjoy dancing and performing, which is probably why I'm an actress. I love performing and getting a reaction from the crowd and giving people energy."

"With [my] music, I feel like I get to be myself, tell my own story, and take my life experiences and not put them into another story but into my own words."

"The new music I have coming, I’ve been working on. All my fans know and they are waiting so patiently or impatiently actually. Its kind of an never-ending process really. I continue to grow each and every day as a write and as a person. There’s more that I want to talk about. There’s more that I am comfortable talking about. I’m constantly being inspired by new artists and producers. I’m definitely taking my time with this."

"From 8 to about 12, I learned very quickly what rejection felt like, what going into a room full of adults expecting a lot out of you felt like. I realized that I'd be in these situations where I had to present myself as someone who, whether I was or wasn't, is confident enough to follow through with the job that I was trying to get."

"I'm very excited about the fact that this is just a very small taste of what's to come. I cannot wait to put music out. It's been a long time coming. It is absolutely going to represent a new era. I've been living with what I've been working on for years now, a couple years, which I really do feel I needed in order to get to where I'm at with the music. And though it is rather frustrating. I have the most patient fans, I don't know how but I got so lucky."

"I think finding your balance is truly about finding your happiness and being patient with yourself and being kind to yourself. It is a term that we hear a lot along with a lot of suggestions as to maybe how to find that balance, but I think you are the one, the only one, that can really define what that is for you."

"I've never left a workout or a gym session feeling anything other than great and happier. Just knowing what my body is capable of and being able to challenge myself…it does something for you mentally that not a lot of other things do."

"Gonna love myself, no, I don't need anybody else (hey) Gonna love myself, no, I don't need anybody else (I love me) Can't help myself, no, I don't need anybody else Anytime, day or nightGonna love myself, no, I don't need anybody else (hey) Gonna love myself, no, I don't need anybody else (I love me) Can't help myself, no, I don't need anybody else Anytime that I like (I love me)"

"I didn't know that I was starving till I tasted you Don't need no butterflies when you give me the whole damn zoo By the way, right away, you do things to my body I didn't know that I was starving till I tasted youBy the way, right away, you do things to my body I didn't know that I was starving till I tasted you"

"I want to get louder I got to get louder We 'bout to go up baby, up we go We 'bout to go up baby, up we goWe're blowing out speakers Our heart a little clearer We 'bout to go up baby, up we go We 'bout to go up baby, up we goFor worst or for better Gonna give it to you In capital letters"

"I was a bird imitating the birds. And so it was their kind of imaginary world that I was raised in, and it was part delicious and part confusing."

"The 1950s and early '60s were emotionally rough for me. In 1950, when I was 23, I was named a Communist by Red Channels, an anti-Communist pamphlet, and was blacklisted by Hollywood from 1952 until the early 1960s."

"It was like, one day you were an actress who could do anything, and the very next day, you could not work in film or television again. And that was the temper of the times."

"I had 12 years to make up for. I'm a very practical person. I had to support myself, I had to support my daughter, and I had to work. And if the way that I could work was to have the years taken off my age at that time, I was desperate to do it. I had to be able to go from one job to another and be pretty. And I achieved that for a good long time. I made up those 12 years."

"I think the most important impetus in life, is that it not be boring. The fear of boredom drove me more than any yearning for something I wanted to achieve."

"I don’t use a typewriter or a computer, so everything was written by pen and ink by my little desk. It took me four years to complete it, and as you can see, it wasn’t an easy book to write."

"Learn how to be a waiter."

"The work she did in the film was very sensitive. There was something in her character that struck a chord with her. I found her fascinating."

"I knew my career as an actor would change. I wouldn’t get these parts again. I had reached the age where Hollywood begins to humiliate beautiful women. I wasn’t going to do it. Walking up there, I could almost feel myself accepting that change."

"For an actor, you sometimes have to say yes to these type of jobs. Especially when you get older, and are a woman."

"I’m in my 90s and it’s lovely to have any of my films appreciated."

"I don't know. Just walk. Just walk. My daughter Dinah just found out that a book she’s written, a novel, is being published. It’s very exiting. Maybe we’ll get to go to some great New York bookstore once everything’s back and see it up their on the shelves. That would be fun to walk to."

"You have to do it. You can't keep thinking about it, you just sort of surrender to it, especially when you get the opportunity to work with great actors."

"I still don't know if I have the hang of it. It's kind of a work in progress but I've felt more invested than ever and committed and passionate since the birth of my son."

"I didn't have a very rebellious personality, I was someone who wanted to make people happy. I was almost an overachiever kind of kid."

"I'm incredibly loyal, I like that. I'm not into trends and fads. I'm in it for the long haul. The same goes for relationships, business and personal. I believe in functioning that way."

"I don't really have a vested interest in what they do career-wise, so long as it's neither destructive to their bodies nor illegal. And hopefully not destructive to other people's bodies either."

"I'd like both of my kids to remain kids as long as possible until they actually have to become grown-ups, so I prefer none of them become professionals before adulthood."

"I have a thing about honesty; I think it's crucial to a relationship. Otherwise, one person holds all the power. It's healthy to be straightforward, and it turns out you can wind up weathering a lot. Knowing that everything is on the table what you see is what you get lends a sense of safety."

"It was something about the way that we were together. He stood out to me as someone singular and rare and beautiful, and I liked the way he was in the world. I liked the way he was with people. I liked the way he was with my son and the way he made me feel."

"Lots of other people have won Oscars, too, and there are a lot of talented women my age working who could play the roles I go after just as well."

"I got to spend the whole year with my kids and my husband. And that's wonderful. My job really suits me."

"I did think that it was the sort of film that we could do together, and we had wanted to work together on something for some time."

"I went through a really hard time at the end of last year. The biggest thing for me is that my kids grow up safely and have happy lives. For me, that’s enough."

"The thing that really matters to me is well-being and happiness."

"I'm more reserved. I can be kind of shy in a group. Once I'm comfortable with someone, I'm not reserved."

"It wasn’t until my late twenties that I realised acting could be a creative experience."

"It’s weird how much his death has affected me, especially how I feel now. I am much more conscious of how precious time is and I strive to find joy in everything. I catch myself quicker now when I start wasting my time worrying about silly things."

"He was funny and gracious and made me feel so comfortable. He was amazing. Subsequently, I became a huge fan of his music."

"After working with him, he became a real hero of mine because he was so kind to me – I was a 14-year-old kid and knew nothing."

"And here we all are separated from people that we love and not able to go live the lives we’ve always loved. It is strange. I didn’t quite anticipate. I don’t think anyone anticipated being in this position now."

"I can’t say exactly how it impacts me and changes me, but I feel like the process of doing that and really considering other perspectives, I feel like it offers some kind of teaching."

"I mean, my dad was there with me and my dad was just so proud and excited to be there and I was so happy to have him there with me and I don’t know, I connect that a lot with my dad in that experience of being there, being there with him and what it meant to him."

"My character has a lot of rapid-fire technical jargon, so wrapping your head around it and trying to say it with authority is a challenge. For me, the scenes that are more emotionally fraught, I always find the most fun to play."

"Jennifer has really emerged in the last few years. She's very intelligent, a great beauty and has a lot of integrity. And she's developing this extraordinary screen presence."

"Jennifer goes in very deep, not just about her character but everyone else's, line by line, page by page. She is driven by the desire to understand why we act the way we do, why we behave a certain way."

"I would never ask an actor to do something that I wouldn't do. So I was right there with them. I would cry with them. I would be angry with them. I would yell with them. I would do everything first so that they could see that it's okay to do it that broad."

"There is something freeing in seeing yourself in a new context. People have no preconceived notion of who you are, and there is relief in knowing that you can re-create yourself. When you’re entrenched in a community of people who know you, it’s scary to proclaim wanting to be different and wanting to experiment. We went to the other side of the world to make our own sound. Usually this is a methodology you employ as a restart later in your career. We did it right up front. We traveled to a foreign country for our first record. We had to uproot ourselves, not because we were deep into career ruts, or didn’t want to give credit to the places we had come from, but because we had no desire to sound like or emulate anything that had come before.It was an extreme way to start, but I learned later on how hard it can become to unsettle yourself, to trip yourself up, and I think that’s a good place to write from. It’s important to undermine yourself and create a level of difficulty so the work doesn’t come too easily. The more comfortable you get, the more money you earn, the more successful you are, the harder it is to create situations where you have to prove yourself and make yourself not just want it, but need it. The stakes should always feel high."

"I think awareness is probably a better word. Because if you are imbalanced, you’re aware enough to see it and to correct it."

"Because the only time I think about aging is when I’m asked about how I think about aging."

"I think aging is hard because it gets you closer to the inevitable—that we are impermanent. And the question becomes, what do you seek out of life? What is it that makes you feel alive and excited to be a part of this experience?"

"People talk about joy and happiness and ask me, ‘You seem like you’re so happy all the time’—and that’s just not the case. But I do choose it. And I choose it sometimes when it’s really hard to."

"Deport all these terrorist supporting goons. Islam has destroyed Muslim countries and then they come here and destroy minds. They know they are liars. Twisted justifications. May they meet their fate."

"A lot of my generation think it’s politically incorrect to like beautiful things. They’re into camp, but it’s not for me. Working on The Age of Innocence spoiled me, because everything I looked at was a work of art."

"I've learned that it's OK to be flawed, that life can be messy, that some days you glide and some days you fall, but most important, that there are no secret answers out there. When you finally accept that it's OK not to have answers and it's OK not to be perfect, you realize that feeling confused is a normal part of what it is to be a human being."

"I'm now of the mindset that I just want to do maybe one movie a year, if that. You know, there's so much out there, and you keep seeing the same faces saying the same things over and over. I just am so sick of it that, it makes me not want to go see movies when you know everything. How much they cost, how much people are paid, what the story is, the cast, everything. There's no mystery anymore."

"There is an assumption when you’re young that things don’t mean as much or aren’t as painful. But first love is the most devastating of all. Society will always look down on teenagers – parents and teachers don’t seem to pay enough attention to kids when they are at their most painful age. Most of the great writers were outcasts, especially the beats. That’s why Lawrence Ferlinghetti is such a hero, because he was the first person to get those artists published."

"[My parents] are my favourite people. They were so admirable in the sense of what they chose to do, as opposed to what they could have done. They were very educated, they could have taken jobs and settled down, but they followed their hearts. They did what they loved. Writing together. Running the museum. Activism. I really revere them. Also, they are archivists, and I definitely inherited that gene."

"Everyone evolves – except for maybe Beetlejuice maybe... He's like endgame for me. I totally want them [Beetlejuice and Lydia] to be truly together! It's [makes a gesture indicating "crazy"] I know, but..."

"...I've grown to love and respect this little smartass girl that wouldn't give me an inch years ago, because she's matured too."

"I was incredibly privileged"

"I’ve always felt very in touch with my masculine side"

"I’m proud of where I come from. Now it’s nice to be in a place where I feel like when people ask me about my parents, I’m not like, ‘Let’s not talk about that.’ I’m like, ‘They’re awesome. I’m grateful to be their child. And I’m also my own human being"

"my instinct is always to say [to myself], ‘It’s not mine"

"The fact that people don’t think what they say affects a celebrity because [they’re] not a person to them is crazy"

"Being uncomfortable with the human body is colonization/brainwashing"

"I’m a human being. I want to fucking defend myself"

"The fact that I was like, ‘Should I not have worn that?’…. No, I do what I want to do, and I make what I want to make, and if I start being afraid of what other people are going to say or think, I’m no longer doing my job as an artist. I’m not experiencing the world and putting that into art. I’m walking on eggshells. Fuck that. So, I needed to take a minute"

"The point of being alive is to experience life and play with it"

"Sometimes we can’t show up, and that’s okay as long as we know how to communicate that we love those people."

"Everyone learns differently. Everyone hears things differently. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses and insecurities, and you have to learn how to support them and what they need to hear. Some actors really need to hear ‘Good job’ after a take. Some actors don’t care. It’s really understanding that"

"My feelings don’t get hurt if the idea doesn’t come across or the idea doesn’t work"

"There’s a difference between being cocky and knowing to trust that you know what you’re doing"

"Creativity is like this invisible thread that you find, and then knowing I’ve got the thread, I’ve just got to keep following it. It’s going to show up, and that confidence is where the good shit is"

"all the scripts that were being sent were about the first Black woman to make a muffin or something. Even though those stories are important to tell, I also want to open things up for myself as an artist"

"There have definitely been moments in my life where I’ve felt like I needed to soften my edges in some way"

"If the story is exciting, it can get me on board even if I’m offered a small part, because I want to contribute to stories that I feel are important to tell"

"I like playing women I identify with"

"And I don’t really know how or why I’d play the hero’s girlfriend, someone with no point of view. I wouldn’t know what to do with the part. There’s no humanity in that kind of character"

"It’s amazing to see the extent to which we’re influenced by our appearance"

"Every time someone, but I’m thinking specifically of women, tries something they’re not sure they can do, they’re taking a risk that requires courage"

"Where women are concerned, there’s a lot of pressure to do everything perfectly, all the time. So when we go out of our comfort zone, it’s no small thing."

"In the end, it’s all about self confidence. When you have it, there’s no need to overdo anything – you just have to choose the right colours, the right cuts and the right fabrics"

"I sincerely believe beauty is to be found inside us"

"We’ve seen stories so many times that when something is actually surprising, it’s the best gift I think you can get"

"I also really wanted to honor that generation of women that really were made to feel like, "This is how it is. Deal with it.""

"I do believe that it's something women have the power to do, but I do think we have yet been given the opportunity within society to actually exercise it on a massive scale. That is the reason why it’s open-ended. And I appreciate what you're saying about wanting to know and saying, "Okay, what does she do with this power?" But I wanted to really leave that question open. Is she ending a cycle or is she continuing a cycle? Is it the idea of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, or does everything change now because the woman is in charge and power is this entity?"

"in order for someone to be on the top, someone has to be on the bottom. It's oppressive by nature"

"I think I'm lucky having parents that have been in show business for a while and they don't care about the shiny stuff so much. They raised me in that way– to stay grounded, not to chase the shiny pretty things."

"I see the human in everyone and everything"

"My parents didn’t become who they are because anything was handed to them, and they didn’t raise a child who expected something to be handed to her, either"

"You can tell when someone is driven by labels. If something is couture they think it’s important and wear it and sometimes make a terrible fashion mistake. People are shocked that I know so little about designers. I know the big ones because my grandmother wore them or they’ve been around forever. I know you because you’re my best friend, but I don’t know much about the fashion world except for when I like something, I like it."

"I needed someone to say, “You’re a woman now. Dress like a woman"

"Why aren’t women starring in more films? It’s because the men are writing them and are the ones cutting the checks. We can’t blame them, I personally don’t think. We need to take that extra step"

"Typically white people have the story, and any kind of minority is like adding that pop of red or fun purse or pair of shoes to jazz up an outfit. These people are accents that make things funny, weird, or dramatic"

"Humor trumps everything and is probably number one. I think it trumps being politically correct"

"I think being kind is actually harder than people like to admit"

"I’m another human being, floating around out there in the universe and figuring it out, too. If seeing that brings you comfort, or gives you hope, or makes you feel anything— makes you feel not al􏰀one — if that is being a role model, then I’m happy to do that."

"The whole film, my character has been covering up her emotions with a hardness, not letting anybody see her crack, so I found myself also feeling like that during filming. I was never emotional, and me as Mikey, I’m a very emotional person. For the last scene, I was almost shaking going into the car because I didn’t know what that would feel like—because I had been feeling the same way as my character for so long."

"I grew up in Los Angeles, but Hollywood always felt so far away from me. So to be here standing in this room today is really incredible. I also just want to again recognize and honor the sex worker community. I will continue to support and be an ally. I also just want to recognize the thoughtful, intelligent, beautiful, breathtaking work of my fellow nominees. I’m honored to be recognized alongside all of you. This is a dream come true."

"Any uncomfortability or pain or difficulty I felt is temporary because that’s just how it is. I welcome those feelings because it means it’s something real that I’m able to show. The film will be forever —any sadness or pain I feel is temporary, and it goes away. And I’m lucky. This is my dream job."