Actresses From Los Angeles

"I love the life of an actor because you spend brief amounts of time with other people and then you just leave. I need to be alone a lot, and I need the outdoors."

"In the 90's action pictures were all the rage. As a woman, I was fed up with them and I initially thought that the script was just another action film dressed up as a period piece. When Michael began speaking about the character's inner life, it was clear that his own inner life was strong, as well. I then saw Cora in a completely different light because of Michael's orientation. It became easy to personalize her."

"While I didn't know it at the time, Daniel had suggested to Michael that I play Cora before we had ever met. And prior to our meeting, I was at a restaurant with John Bailey, the director, when I felt this man looking over in our direction and smiling a good deal. I realized, after leaving, that it was Daniel. He later told me that he was having lunch with Michael and had coincidentally asked him earlier that very day about me. It's just a funny thing, isn't it? And I was terribly flattered when he told me this tale. He was also very clear that the decision to cast me as Cora was all Michael's."

"We began talking about the characters and he opened up about his vision. He's extremely thoughtful and sees grand issues both social and political in an interesting way. Quite honestly, I wasn't certain how some of his ideas were applicable to the screenplay, but he was heartfelt and adamant about them. And I remember completely going with it."

"I'd just love to see a great love story, and nobody makes them anymore. You have great actresses like Cate Blanchett — she's fabulous in Pushing Tin and Elizabeth — and you don't use them."

"You don't need someone else's approval to do what you want; just figure it out and do it, damn it!"

"A lot of people come up to me and say, 'Oh God, I'm just like Karen, that's what they [tell me] at the office'. I'm like, 'You know what? The people in your office may not be giving you a compliment. You may be getting fired soon.'"

"People see you one way and think, 'That's not her real thing, she's just putting that on now.' But that is! That's where my creativity really resides. Where it all springs. My characters are really bizarre. They're kind of dark and not really considered great people. It all comes from the same dark place, it's just filtered through comedy."

"If I weren't an actress playing a socialite, I'd have lavender hair, wear crappy vintage clothes and have tattoos. I'd be some kind of crazy lawless rebel - an alternative underground riot girl."

"Two days ago, I dreamt I married a 5-year-old boy. He treated me like a queen and was perfectly lovely. We took a driving trip for our honeymoon. Then it dawned on me: 'Oh my God! He doesn't have a driver's license! We could get arrested!'""

"I'm really good at staying home all day in my pajamas because I had a [dad] who did that."

"I've been going to the same grocery store for 13 years, and all of a sudden one day everybody was like, 'Oh, my God...'"

"I am terrified of mayonnaise. It was so bad when I was little that my friends would chase me around the house with a jar of mayonnaise and a knife."

"One tabloid had an article about how I was an irresistible sex- and man-magnet and how men flock to me. Of course, they were absolutely correct..."

"I like looser clothes, which always prompts my mom to say something classic like, 'You have such a darling figure - show it off more!'"

"I should have my 'girl citizenship' revoked. I never get facials. I never get my nails done. I'm so busy."

"My best friend was at the grocery store standing behind these two guys in line, and one of the guys told the other that I was a man. He said, 'If you look closely, you can tell that she is,' and the other guy was like, 'Oh, my God! Now that you mention it, she is a man!'. So I'm denying that I'm a man."

"I'm going to climb up this ladder, you understand, to this gate that's like this high and I'm going to pass two dogs and some bags and myself over the thing into a cab driver's arms. THAT's my plan!"

"So I light the fire with the lighter and then I'm like, 'Now, how am I going to light the candles?' And I'm racing through the house, tearing open drawers and throwing things out of closets, looking for matches … and I had just lit the fire with the thing!!! And then I was like, 'How did I light the fire?' So then l took the thing and lit the candles."

"My off-white poodle. She doesn't consider herself to be gay, but I have my hunch."

"One day when I'm walking and I see -- at first I thought maybe he was resting -- but I saw a big dead seal on the beach, which was really sad. However, the thing that I thought was puzzling was there was a couple, a young guy and a girl on a beach towel not 15 feet from this big, dead mammal, and I look up and they're waving at me, like, 'Isn't it a pretty day?' And I'm like, 'There's a big dead seal right there.' They're putting on lotion. It was just bizarre. And, curtain. I just didn't want to be at the beach anymore."

"Well, I was missing my earplugs. And the way that I found out why they're missing is because the little Elmo -- his five pounds -- came in to the bedroom and deposited something on -- he came in from outside, he put something on the rug and was going to eat it. And I walked over and it was an earplug that had already been in and back out -- and apparently so delicious … he wanted it again!"

"I couldn't pronounce my last name until I was, like, 11."

"I said, `Now, wait a minute, so you're telling me you want this fish who lives in a fish tank in a dentist's office to be a fictitious character from an NBC sitcom?' I mean, it just doesn't make any sense to me. It's like, why would you want Mickey Mouse to be the lead in the `House of the Seven Gables' or something."

"I like to take chances, and that's the key to comedy -- dancing like an idiot but doing it with wild abandon."

"Chicago is my favorite American city. … I like all the museums. I love the Art Institute. I love all the theatre and the blues clubs and bars, and the people are so great. I think Chicago is the perfect blend of a big city with a Midwestern finish on it. Everybody is really nice but it is a sophisticated city. I love the park. I love the zoo. I love the lake. The whole thing."

"[Madonna] worked so hard that it was really very touching. She’s a perfectionist and there’s never been anyone on the show that wanted to rehearse more than Madonna did. She wanted to rehearse her scenes over and over again."

"I consider myself bisexual, and my philosophy is, everyone innately is, although I've never had a full-on relationship with a woman, just a couple of what I'd term half-assed dalliances. So I haven't explored it to the degree that I'd like to, but I'll tell you, I'm open to it. And I don't have any problem saying that."

"It is no big deal to me. I have always been attracted to women, and I went on dates with women if they asked me.... It did not seem that different to me. But then I met my [husband], and now he is the apple of my eye."

"It doesn't matter who you love, it's that you love. Who cares if men marry men or women marry women? In San Francisco you don't care, and I applaud that. And I applaud Mayor Newsom for being so brave."

"He's kicking such major ass that it's insane!"

"See, I thought that Jay has had too many high class, very hoity-toity guests on this week. And I wanted to bring everything down a notch or two."

"If Marilyn is in love with my husband it proves she has good taste, for I am in love with him too."

"When Marilyn Monroe got out of the game, I wrote something like, "Southern California's special horror notwithstanding, if the world offered nothing, nowhere to support or make bearable whatever her private grief was, then it is that world, and not she, that is at fault." I wrote that in the first few shook-up minutes after hearing the bulletin sandwiched in between Don and Phil Everly and surrounded by all manner of whoops and whistles coming out of an audio signal generator, like you are apt to hear on the provincial radio these days. But I don't think I'd take those words back."

"The women she played were totally unreal. Her vulnerability in her flesh was as compelling and audible as a baby crying, but she played either a gold digger-the woman who can only be bought or the child/whore who asks nothing whatsoever, who is available like a tray of hors d'oeuvres at a cocktail party. In The Seven Year Itch she is the total male fantasy of available snatch, a gorgeous woman without any entanglements, no friends, no family, no demands, who wants only a married man since he won't fall in love with her. What living woman could ever identify with that character?...Her career began with the famous nude calendar, although the most lasting images are at once dressed and undressed-the pose on the subway grating, for instance. She wears a flimsy looking halter dress that flies up, deserting her. She is the embodiment of titillation. Any man can dream of possessing her, because she seems so accessible and defenseless. For a man, that image on which can be projected any fantasy, any wish fulfillment, is the source of her immense and lasting appeal. She is a living doll-the perfect body that offers everything and asks nothing. She embodies the woman who never was because she isn't anything in herself. That image was something she put on to go out into the frightening and hostile world. She had learned early that she would be rewarded if she appeared compliant and childlike, not in the sense of the virgin to be deflowered, but in the sense of the woman who doesn't understand, doesn't know what to do, never learns a lesson; the warm and sensual Galatea who never gets up and leaves Pygmalion, but waits passively for the next owner. But behind that façade was a woman needy, scared, ambitious, leaking self-hatred and desperately wanting something real and solid and important. She wanted to be...respected. She never was."

"To have survived, she would have had to be either more cynical or even further from reality than she was. Instead, she was a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes."

"There are people so vivid in life that they seem not to disappear when they die, and for many weeks I found myself having to come about and force myself to encounter the fact that Marilyn had ended. I realized that I still, even then, expected to meet her once more, somewhere, sometime, and maybe talk sensibly about all the foolishness we had been through — in which case I would probably have fallen in love with her again. And the iron logic of her death did not help much: I could still see her coming across the lawn, or touching something, or laughing, at the same time that I confronted the end of her as one might stand watching the sinking sun. When a reporter called asking if I would be attending her funeral in California, the very idea of a burial was outlandish, and stunned as I was, I answered without thinking, "She won't be there." I could hear his astonishment, but I could only hang up, it was beyond explaining."

"We think of Marilyn who was every man's love affair with America. Marilyn Monroe who was blonde and beautiful and had a sweet little rinky-dink of a voice and all the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards."

"Marilyn Monroe’s suicide made headlines when I was twenty-two years old and struggling to find my place in the world. We were both working class in background, but there any comparison ended. While I was a doctor’s assistant by day and a pariah dyke wearing boys’ clothes by night, Marilyn was the most heterosexual, “most beautiful” and most desired in the public world. She was a star, she kept company with America’s biggest male stars—Mickey Mantle of baseball, Arthur Miller of literature, John F. Kennedy of politics. And at what seemed the height of a gloriously successful career, she killed herself. Or that was the story. then. Since, it has changed, from a conspiracy that she was murdered, to the more plausible reason: the accidental overdose of an addict. I was upset by her death; if she could not succeed in life, how on earth could I? And yet, her image did not fade; she continues to hold a position as an icon of sexual power."

"You want me to talk about Marilyn? My God, I think there have been more books on Marilyn Monroe than on World War II, and there's a great similarity. It was a very complex thing working with her because she had tremendous problems with herself. She was on the edge of deep depression – whatever you want to call it – at all times. There was always a question, which you sweated out: "Is she going to show up? Is she going to show up on time? Is she going to live through the scene? Is she going to finish the picture?" And that is a very nerve-wracking thing if you've got eight million dollars in the enterprise. But when it's all done, it's well worth it. It's that old thing that I said, I don't know, four hundred years ago: "Look, if we wanted somebody to be on time and to know the lines just perfectly, I've got an old aunt in Vienna. She's going to be there at five in the morning and never miss a word. But who wants to look at her?""

"I remember her on the screen, huge as a colossus doll, mincing and whispering and simply hoping her way into total vulnerability."

"Hawks says it's wonderful we knew and worked with Marilyn before she got difficult. Because she was so winning and adorable in Monkey Business [1952]. When I drink that youth serum and I'm acting like a teenager, Marilyn really got into it. I'm diving off the high board and she's giggling and waving me on. Years later she asked me to costar in something called The Billionaire. It was a comedy and she said her husband Arthur Miller was reworking it. Arthur Miller a comedy writer? I ran away and so did Greg Peck, and the completed film, ' [1960], showed she'd become all blurry and distant. It was sad."

"I think Marilyn is bound to make an almost overwhelming impression on the people who meet her for the first time. It is not that she is pretty, although she is of course almost incredibly pretty, but she radiates, at the same time, unbounded vitality and a kind of unbelievable innocence. I have met the same in a lion-cub, which my native servants in Africa brought me. I would not keep her, since I felt that it would in some way be wrong...I shall never forget the almost overpowering feeling of unconquerable strength and sweetness which she conveyed. I had all the wild nature of Africa amicably gazing at me with mighty playfulness."

"She came up to me and said, "You're going to play my uncle, right?" "That's right, Miss Monroe." Then she looked at me and said, "No incest.""

"Well-behaved women rarely make history."

"A sex symbol is a heavy load to carry when one is tired, hurt and bewildered."

"To all the girls that think you're fat because you're not a size zero you're the beautiful one it's society who's ugly."

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

"A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself."

"People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one."