Models From The United States

"By exposing myself, I hope to expose others to the many benefits of a vegetarian diet."

"One of the issues with animals that I'm really concerned about is people who get animals as pets and maybe aren't prepared to take care of them and haven't really thought it through. I've seen a lot of people I know who get dogs and they can't handle them two days later … [Fur] is a really easy thing to avoid, you don't need fur and if you want the look of fur, I mean, there’s faux fur. There's just no reason for it. I just make a point of telling people that I don't buy products that are fur … I have a fragrance line and one of the things I really love about is the manufacturer assured me that nothing's tested on animals … I mean, how many years have we been selling cosmetics in this country? We should be able to figure out what we can use on humans safely and what no."

"I'm learning as much martial arts as I possibly can. My show is packed with action. Enough to get a rise."

"I had seen … the mistreatment and abuse of these elephants … and I was brought to tears. When you look at something like the circus and everyone's laughing and there's color and there's music and everything seems so great, but when you go right behind that door and they're in these crates all day long and then they're getting shocked and beat just so they can get up and dance around on a ball — it was just so sickening. … Stop going to the circus, don’t buy real fur, don’t buy a dog, go rescue a dog. You can’t keep supporting people who are doing this to helpless animals, at all."

"As a proud person of Chinese descent, it broke my heart to learn just how terribly animals suffer and die on Chinese fur farms and that there are no penalties for this abuse. … When you think about even that little tiny trim of fur on your gloves or on your collar, that is still coming from an animal that had to endure so much pain just for you. There’s nothing good about pretending like you don’t know."

"Since I was a little girl, I never felt right eating animals before. I’ve always known what the animals have went through. They’ve been abused. They’re giving up their lives to satisfy somebody’s appetite. … I am a Christian girl. It may come as a surprise to some people that I support gay marriage. I believe wholeheartedly in “Do not judge others.” Let people live their lives and be happy. That’s what the bible teaches—love one another."

"Growing up, I've always had so much love for animals, and I wasn't really fond of eating meat and really anything with a face because I just felt that it was an awful thing to do. Just recently I switched to a vegetarian. I had my first Thanksgiving with being a vegetarian; no turkey, I had tofu. A vegan dish, it was delicious. I did not miss turkey. I've never had a hamburger in my life. And I'm so glad that I can say that."

"[Receiving an anonymous email about animals getting skinned alive for fur] made me furious, and angry and depressed. I was an animal lover my whole life, but I never realized that humans beings were capable of such cruelty. … It was a huge wake-up call for me, and I knew I had to get involved, so I dedicated my life basically to being a voice for animals because they're voiceless and defenseless. … If you're an animal lover, just try to educate your friends and be a voice. Always try to find products that are not tested on animals and stay away from fur. … It's amazing how powerful social media can be – animals can be saved just because people share info and care. It's all about being active and just trying to make the world a better place."

"I believe in living a vegetarian lifestyle from a health standpoint and I also have deep compassion for animals. I wanted to raise awareness and educate people on the abuse and inhumane treatment that goes on every day in slaughterhouses. … I want people to know that you can still be fit and have curves living a vegetarian lifestyle. … [I have been a vegetarian] since I was little girl. I grew up on a ranch and animals were my pets."

"I want to … empower other women to go vegan to feel better about their body and to live a compassionate lifestyle. … I'm vegan for the animals. If you go into the factory farms, when you see what these animals endure and the torture, it's not right and the only way to not participate in that is to go vegan."

"[As a vegetarian] I feel better, I have more energy on and off the set, and I have the satisfaction of knowing that I’m doing something to help stop animal suffering."

"The leading cause of carbon emissions in the world is animal agriculture and no one is talking about it. This is the real issue that is driving climate change. … As a vegan I save 1,100 gallons of water a day. … If we are talking about a sustainability message, you cannot leave out the animal message – absolutely impossible. … We are looking at a world that is facing ultimate destruction if we don’t make better, smarter choices, and that starts with you. Every dollar you spend goes to feed a corporation that is either responsible or not responsible. … There are three things I want to make movies about: environmental problems, animals and human rights. Those are the three things I look out for all the time."

"Acting has been a journey of self-discovery for me. It is the most fulfilling thing I know. It is also terrifying, and painfully awkward. But for me there is no better feeling that truthfully living in a moment, under completely imaginative circumstances. There is also nothing more devastating than walking out of an audition knowing that you were “acting” and not simply being. I feel like a fraud most of the time, but then you have these magical moments when you really feel and it is those moments that make it all worthwhile. It’s a high like nothing I have ever experienced. Acting is the most paradoxical of crafts – you have to learn it, practice obsessively and then throw it all away. Its like walking on a tightrope, there is a very thin line between passion and technique and you have to find the perfect balance. I think it’s a very personal and private art."

"As for working in both industries I think Thai and American cultures are so vastly different there are bound to be misunderstandings on set but I feel very lucky to have a good grasp on both, although since moving to America I definitely feel more westernized. The highly competitive cut throat world of Hollywood has made me a much stronger more committed actress and person."

"I am so thrilled to be involved with PETA and taking a stance that I would rather be naked than wear fur, because I've always grown up with animals and I consider them my best friends, and for us to put them through so much torture and cruelty just for fashion I think is so horrific, and we need to raise the awareness because a person needs to learn to be comfortable in their own skin, not the skin of another animal."

"You're not alone with your nervous feelings. Every single person who walks in that room is feeling the same way that you are. But you have an opportunity to view your nerves as something different. It has been proven that the physical effects of stress (meaning the jitters you get, the shortness of breath, the rapid heart rate) are identical to the physical effects of courage! So when you start to feel nervous and stressed, redefine it in your mind: You are getting courageous and ready for a challenge! Don't see it as a threat but rather an opportunity to show your courage!"

"It’s not okay to actually take a life out of an individual for whatever reason and then sell those body parts. It’s sick. It’s really sick. And it’s hurtful because those lives were real and just and you’re giving them absolutely no grace in the end of their life,” she continued. “It’s, you know, they’ll have to meet their Maker one day. So as much as we all have our opinions on this matter, I think at the end of the day they’re going to have to meet God one day and they’ll have to answer for themselves on what they chose to do with their time on earth, you know?"

"My mom was always my biggest teacher, my inspiration, my role model. My mom was just the most amazing person. She was like a bon vivant in that she just lived each day to the fullest. As soon as I became a vegetarian, she became a vegetarian. … I was actually inspired by a book she was reading that I picked up off the nightstand when I was about 13. It was a Norman Mailer book [Miami and the Siege of Chicago] and it had a very graphic scene of the slaughterhouses in Chicago. So I read that and I said, "I love animals. I don't want to be a part of that system.""

"Nutrition has always played a huge role in my life. I became a vegetarian when I was 13 and then got my entire family to become vegetarians. And I have always been active my whole life. I genuinely enjoy sports and I spend time on my total gym."

"Lois and I worked together in ‘Ladies Courageous’ ten years earlier. We were roommates on our location shooting. I had a blind date and when Lois and I were going up the elevator with some servicemen, she pointed to a very handsome guy and said, ‘I’ll bet that’s him.’ And it was! We’ve been married over 50 years now! I used to see Lois every week at church but lost touch after we moved south."

"I didn’t like what I was seeing, so I decided that was it. I never thought I was a good actress in pictures—but later I became an actress on TV. I kept every W2 for every show or film I did. I had them in a huge box which I took to SAG, dropped on their desk and asked for my pension!"

"I was a model—someone saw my picture—and I landed a stock contract at Universal. Because of my experience, I received a higher salary than the other girls starting out—and during my first week in Hollywood, I got to meet and have dinner with Greta Garbo!"

"Universal was like a family. When I was having a terrible time during my pregnancy, they came to my home and built sets right in my bedroom so I could finish the few scenes I had left in ‘That’s the Spirit’. But Columbia—that was work! I did a lot of crime pictures and another horror called ‘The Creeper’. When it was time for those cats to be all over my dead body, I yelled for a stand in. I couldn’t stand having dozens of cats walking all over me. It gave me the shivers!"

"Producer Gail Patrick used me so much as a villain I finally told her, ‘They’ll know it’s me the moment I show up!’”"

"I never did a western while at Universal. I did a variety of roles, including ‘The Climax’ with Boris Karloff. There is a huge painting of me in the film. When it was over, Ernest Pagano, one of the producers, put it up in his office. It took up most of the wall! I wasn’t happy because people thought we were having an affair—which I never have and never would do."

"Off screen, I was friends with people I was nasty to in pictures. Judy Canova and I were friends. There’s a terrific line in ‘WAC From Walla Walla’ where she’s trying to pick out a shade of lipstick. I walk by and say ‘window shade.’ [Laughs] Judy played the star bit to the hilt! She had an entourage that followed her around. One woman held an umbrella over Judy’s head to keep the sun off her."

"In most of my westerns, in fact most of the movies I did at Columbia, I was the meanie, the bitch. Like ‘Colorado Sundown’ (at Republic) with Rex Allen and even the musical, ‘Arkansas Swing’ with the Hoosier Hot Shots, a terrific quartet who were also in ‘Song of Idaho’."

"It was my idea to ‘frost’ the streak in the front. I was searching for a different look. Either be blonde or brunette. But don’t be brunette in the back and blonde in the front."

"I was never a politician. I care about my country. I put God first. For the last seven-and-a-half years, I’ve seen this country led by a leader that’s made mistakes. I spoke my mind about it. But because I’m in the industry, you can’t talk about that. The media and the liberals act the way they act: The will back up the president until the end. It’s been interesting. I’ve had fantastic directors who have said officially to my agents and managers they will never hire me again. They will never even see me for projects. That’s unfair."

"I think this country allows you freedom of speech. Anybody should be allowed to say whatever they want. When you’re in my business, you can’t talk about [conservative] politics. You just can’t. You’re attacked viciously in a way that I’ve never been attacked before."

"When I arrived, a hundred women were there [auditioning]... I raised my voice three registers, curled up in a chair, licked my hand and did ‘meow’s ,the director said, "I didn’t tell her to do any of that stuff" – but the next day I got the part. Caesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, I was so lucky to work with all of them."

"In the past eight years, failed policies have caused our country to deteriorate. Our rights have been trampled, and our security threatened. We are weaker by almost every measure. We are on the wrong path. That is clear even to someone who was not even born here. I came to the United States from Rome, Italy in 1985. I followed all the rules, and finally became a naturalized citizen in 1996. Others who want to come to the U.S. to live and work should follow the same rules. We are a nation of laws for a reason. There should be no shortcuts for those who don’t want to pay or wait"

"Since I'm old, instead of taking the booing, I want to tell you, I'm doing the very best I can. I mean, If you're a real fan, you know that I'm not just like my job is not to sign autographs, right? My job is to drive a car and to tell the crew chief what's going on. I don't appreciate the booing... It hurts my feelings. I'm a fucking person; you know what I mean? I'm a person, too. I have feelings. When you boo me, it hurts my feelings. Please just be supportive fans. I'll do everything I can. When I came from over here, my car was over there. I can only do so much. I have to get in the car. So please understand that."

"To this day I don't know why they voted for me. I'm hoping that it was because I chose a talent that made them sit up. I played a 70-year-old Irish mother lamenting the loss of her last son to the sea. I took off all my makeup, wore a shawl and my father's black socks — the costume I had worn when I'd done the play when I was in high school. It was the only thing I knew to do. I'm an actress, that's what I wanted to be."

"It's genes. My mother looked great at 96. And, you know, I realized that the more you're around, the more that gravity pulls you down. And so I started rubbing up. I wash my face rubbing up, I put my makeup on up and in the shower I rub up — anyplace I can. I'm going to the gym three times a week. That also helps. And it helps to have a good feeling about people. The laugh line is going to be there whether you like it or not, so keep it there — keep it in a laugh line."

"The Mummy's Tomb was my only horror film, so I remember it vividly. We had to work all night on the kidnapping and graveyard scenes. Lon Chaney Jr. had a strap around his neck to support me. One arm was supposed to be paralyzed and he could only hold me with the other arm. I had this negligee with marabou—and one of the feathers somehow got under Lon’s rubber mummy mask. He was one unhappy actor—because he couldn’t get it out. After it was over, he thanked me for being petite. It seems some of my predecessors were a little on the heavy side! The day of the kidnapping scene—where the Mummy takes me from my bed, the director told me, "When you see him you really have to scream!" He thought since I’d never done anything like that before, I wouldn’t be able to do it. One look at Lon Chaney Jr. coming at me and it wasn’t hard to let out that scream at all!"

"They were a lot of fun but at the time I had two children. I’m just a mother at heart, so I decided it was time to retire from the screen. I would hate to be around today. In my time you learned your craft with small roles. They always handed you a script and told you, ‘This is your role.’ Now, you have to read for a part, over and over. 2,000 people have to approve before you get anything. I liked my era, where you were groomed."

"It’s funny about career choices. I had to fight to test for the Janet Leigh role in Walking My Baby Back Home. Janet couldn’t dance at the time and I could—but she was a bigger name. I also fought to get the role Piper Laurie had in Son of Ali Baba. Luckily, I lost that one. The one I didn’t want to do was Revenge of the Creature. Science-Fiction was considered bottom of the barrel in those days. Of course, that’s the picture I am most remembered for. It’s very ironic!"

"Her career is marked by an unusually, even spectacularly, high degree of interpenetration between her publicly available private life and her films. The star phenomenon depends upon collapsing the distinction between the star-as-person and the star-as-performer. This does not usually mean that the incidents of a film's scenario are taken to be actual incidents in the star's life but rather that they 'reveal' or express the personality of the type-of-person of the star. In the case of Turner, however, not only do her vehicles furnish characters and situations in accord with her off-screen image, but frequently incidents in them echo incidents in her life so that by the end of her career films like Peyton Place, Imitation of Life, Madame X and Love Has Many Faces seem in parts like mere illustrations of her life."

"Lana Turner used to come in every Tuesday and Thursday. That girl can really dance, and she did at Billy's. She always asked me for "" and "." She used to like to dance with young , who used to win all of Billy's lindy contests."

"Her hair was dark, messy, uncombed. Her hands were trembling so she could barely read the script. But she had that sexy clean quality I wanted. There was something smoldering underneath that innocent face."

"I find men terribly exciting, and any girl who says she doesn't is an anemic old maid, a streetwalker, or a saint."

"I don't jog. I don't think it is good for women. I don't think our bosoms, our innards [or] our ovaries were meant to be jumping up and down. And I can say for the gentlemen, I don't think it's so damn good for your innards too!"

"I don't think I realized how difficult it was. Forgetting the tragedy [the killing of Johnny Stompanato] for a moment, just [her] growing up. I didn't exactly think that I was stupid at the time, and of course my friends had children, and they seemed perfectly normal; my child was normal. But again, fate—all of this is preordained. Like, when I've been asked, "Miss Turner, would you change anything if you could?", well sure I would like to change a lot of things! You know, falsities and mistakes that I've made, but you didn't know it at the time. It's only in retrospect that you realize."

"All those years that my image on the screen as "sex goddess"—well that makes me laugh. Sex was never important to me. I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but it's true. Romance, yes. Romance was very important. But I never liked being rushed into bed, and I never allowed it. I'd put it off as long as I could and I gave in only when I was in love, or thought I was. It was always the courtship, the cuddling, and the closeness that I cared about, never the act of sex itself—with some exceptions of course. I'm not masquerading as a prude, but I've always been portrayed as a sexy woman, and that's wrong. Sensuous, yes. When I'm involved with someone I care for deeply, I can feel sensual. But that's a private matter."

"I always felt I had the full support of my parents... I was never made to feel that it was anything strange. When I first told my mother, her reaction was not one of shock, it was, "Oh, darling, you'll outgrow that." And then I didn't outgrow it. And I think that my parents were so happy just to see me happy that they didn't care where the happiness originated."

"Humor has been the balm of my life, but it's been reserved for those close to me, not part of the public Lana."

"The truth is, sex doesn't mean that much to me now. It never did, really. It was romance I wanted, kisses and candlelight, that sort of thing. I never did dig sex very much."

"When I awoke in the morning, my mother and Julia Hislop were whispering in a corner. They didn't have to tell me why. I already knew that my father was dead. And when the feeling of peace wore off, the surprise at having known intensified my sense of loss and sorrow. Although I was only nine, I could imagine what death meant. I knew he was gone forever."

"The thing about happiness is that it doesnt help you to grow; only unhappiness does that. So I'm grateful that my bed of roses was made up equally of blossoms and thorns. I've had a privileged, creative, exciting life, and I think that the parts that were less joyous were preparing me, testing me, strengthening me."