"I'm a young Latina woman growing up in a primarily white area of town where I live. I've been called it all. My hate comments on YouTube tell me to go back to where I came from. I was born in Hackensack Hospital. I'll go back there."

"We just need to normalise our hearts' not having boundaries. I think that there's this idea that we as public figures can't have thoughts or feelings because we are like paper dolls to a majority of the public."

"When I was in the running for María in 'West Side Story,' they kept calling to ask if I was legit. I remember thinking, 'Do you want me to bring my abuelita in?' I will. I'll bring her into the studio if you want to meet her."

"It's the most jarring feeling as someone who is quite literally in therapy for impostor syndrome. You're sitting at the table with the likes of these incredible actors, singers, activists, Olympians, models who have earned their due. They earned their seat at the table, and you can't help but think, 'What am I doing here?'"

"I feel like if I lose touch with humanity by only surrounding myself with privilege then I won't be able to play my roles honestly any more."

"I had just come off of a play, so I was already working on a deficit of sleep and being very tired. I had a lot of a sense memory of being a parent and sort of the exhaustion that comes with that. I just wanted to meet the character where I was, and so it was wonderful to not have to pretend to be different than I was on set. I feel like I really was able to channel my own experiences through this."

"I had an existential crisis at the Oscars, sitting next to Sean Penn and Meryl Streep and being like, 'What am I doing here? I don't belong here. Everybody can see right through it all.'"

"I did take it seriously because I felt that I understood the character emotionally. The whole Disney princess thing hadn't sunk in yet. I'm not sure I could have done well at the audition if I knew what was at stake. I'm glad it wasn't pitched to me in that way. It was pitched as just another role, and that was probably a smart thing."

"I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything."

"I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen. I did Desdemona [at the National, opposite Olivier] with great discomfort and was terrified all the time. But then everyone was terrified of Larry."

"[On the attempted suicide of her husband, actor Robert Stephens, who was playing the lead in the film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) at the time] And after that it was just hopeless. We had two little boys. He didn't understand. I sure as hell didn't understand. It got worse and then it went on getting worse and worse. In the end it was destroying everybody. And he was having so many affairs. [Stephens saw doctors] I remember when he was diagnosed as hyper-manic asking what it meant and the doctor saying violent moods swings and indiscriminate sexual activity. And I thought "that about covers it really"."

"It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies."

"What's strange about the way my brain functions is that the only thing that has ever made me feel calm is knowing clearly what I want."

"For me, I value privacy so much and I understand why I need to talk about the work, the films and all of that but it's incredibly hard to reveal stuff about my life, so it makes me feel pretty boring and very protective."

"Oh, for the love, I can't even simulate sex without dying!. I had a little asthma attack, without any prior knowledge that I had asthma, during the scene where we had to jump up and down for hours and hours screaming and yelling on the bed. [It] was humiliating, because it was the second day of shooting."

"I am blessed with a great family and great people around me that would be able to kick me in the shins if I ever for one minute got lost up in the clouds. I've been really lucky in that sense."

"The first time I had a panic attack I was sitting in my friend's house, and I thought the house was burning down. I called my mom and she brought me home, and for the next three years it just would not stop. I would go to the nurse at lunch most days and just wring my hands. I would ask my mom to tell me exactly how the day was going to be, then ask again 30 seconds later. I just needed to know that no one was going to die and nothing was going to change."

"Flaws are my favorite part of people, usually."

"Sometimes just wanting to do a good role, a great role, isn't a good enough reason to do it."

"Creativity is really about excess. And when you want to make something there is a kind of obsession that has to come with it in a healthy way, in a way that is intoxicating, you are engulfed by something."

"No Cricklewood girl would ever admit to being from there."

"Adam and Evelyne was a charming light comedy in which Jean started off as a teenager who goes away to finishing school in Switzerland and returns a sophisticated young woman [-] It was quite extraordinary playing love scenes with someone you loved and who was in love with you. [-] She enjoyed it thoroughly and when, in the film, I was telling her how much I loved her but that I was afraid I was too old for her, she'd mutter under her breath, "You're telling me, you dirty old man." Later, when she had to tell me she loved me, she'd whisper "and I mean it, too.""

"The whole thing -[actor Stewart Granger's pursuit of Jean Simmons]- began as a joke but very quickly developed into a romance. [-] One day my agent called and told me the master, Rank, would like me to have dinner with him in his private suite at the Dorchester Hotel. [-] "Now, it's about Jean Simmons," he started in his flat Yorkshire accent. "I like to believe we're all a big family and I regard Jean as my daughter. (Well, you're a pretty damn mean father I thought, knowing the ridiculous salary he was paying to Britain's top female star.) "You're a married man with two children and what I hear is going on is wrong." "It's a disgrace" added John Davis who had been eyeing me balefully [-] I told them I was no longer married and that I had been divorced for six months [and] beat a hasty retreat.""

"in Divorce American style, there was the discomfort of seeing one of the beautiful wasted actresses of the screen, Jean Simmons. Her suggestions of sensibility - what she embodies - were too fine for the world of that movie. Her presence made the movie she was trapped in seem uglier."