Actresses From New York City

"Powerful women often get concerned with this idea that they’re going to be seen in this unforgiving light. Screw that. It’s so old-fashioned… It’s so uninspired and actually really cowardly."

"It is important to remind young people that peace is the only victory."

"It's important to figure out your own life before involving someone else."

"Just because you're in the spotlight, or just because you're an actor or making films or whatever, doesn't mean that you're not entitled to your own personal privacy. I think no matter what the context, if that is besieged in some way, it feels unjust. It feels wrong."

"Republican Party hasn't been black friendly over the many centuries in this country."

"Broadway has been very good to me. But I've been very good to Broadway, too."

"Everyone thinks I'm Jewish. I'm not. Last year I got a call: "Happy Hanukkah." I said "Ma, I'm not Jewish.""

"People talk about 'my career,' but 'career' is too pompous a word. It was a job, and I have always felt very privileged to be paid for what I love doing."

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

"With Barbara Stanwyck, here was a true pro, in her last year of screen stardom. We shot mostly on locations just to save money. One day, I saw her applying her own makeup beside the truck before the shoot. She looked up and just shrugged. Who could blame her? This production was cost-efficient."

"Here was an actress that never played just one side of a character. She always played the truth. I once asked Barbara Stanwyck the secret of acting, and she said, "Just be truthful, and if you can fake that, you've got it made.""

"Working with Barbara Stanwyck was one of the greatest pleasures of my career."

"There's nothing phony about her, either in life or on the screen."

"My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth."

"I never got a Oscar. I never had an acting lesson. Life was my only training."

"I could understand if they picked Katharine Hepburn, but of course she wouldn't do it. But when they asked me, I thought at first it was a mistake. I thought they got me mixed up with Bette Davis. Attention embarrasses me. I don't like to be on display. I was always an extrovert in my work, but when it comes time to be myself I'll take a powder every time."

"I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don't try to make me into something I'm not. If you want someone to tiptoe down the Barkley staircase in crinoline and politely ask where the cattle went, get another girl."

"People lose their senses at the beach 'cause the sun beats down too hard. They say things that just don't gel, you know. Well, you've heard this a lot: "Pick up a shell - oh, you can hear the ocean!" You could pick up a bicycle and hear the ocean - you're at the beach. Put the shell down, you'll hear the ocean twice as loud."

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

"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?"

"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."

"I grew up as a tomboy. I was always barefoot, running races with the guys on the block, climbing trees, and beating kids up."

"All I ever wanted to do was act. And pay my bills"

"I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape."

"Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine."

"Thanks! Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted this! You don't know...my brother sitting there, he says "Thank God we don't have to listen to anymore... you can do it now!" My mom's home, everyone's watching... I have to thank the people at Paramount; I have to thank Jerry Zucker for taking the time he took before he decided to use me because he was sure it was for me... I have to thank Patrick Swazye... he was a stand up guy and went to them and said "I wanna do it with her"… I wanna thank Demi... I wanna thank everybody who makes movies... I come from New York; as a kid, I lived in the projects and you're the people I watched...you're the people that made me wanna be an actor... I'm so proud to be here, I'm proud to be an actor and I'm gonna keep on acting, and thank you so much!"

"Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African. The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American. This is my country. My people helped to build it and we've been here for centuries. Just call me black, if you want to call me anything."

"The name was a fluke. A joke. It started when I was doing A Christmas Carol in San Diego. We'd sit backstage and talk about names we'd never give our children, like Pork Pie or Independence. Of course, now people are walking around with those names. A woman said to me, "If I was your mother, I would have called you Whoopi, because when you're unhappy you make a sound like a whoopee cushion. It sounds like a fart." It was like "Ha-ha-ha-ha—Whoopi!" So people actually started calling me Whoopi Cushion. After about a year, my mother said, "You won't be taken seriously if you call yourself Whoopi Cushion. So try this combination: Whoopi Goldberg."

"Actresses can only play women. I'm an actor, I can play anything."

"I'm an actor. That's what I do. I'm not a stand-up comic. I do characters. I'm very good. I'll be better. But right now I'm a very good actor."

"But I want very much to be accepted as a good actor, and I have to admit this. Just before the first screenings of The Color Purple, I had some doubts about my name. Steven had told me the billing would read, "And Introducing Whoopi Goldberg as Celie." I had nightmares that when it appeared, a little ripple of laughter would run through the audience and it would grow and grow until it became a horrendous roar of guffaws. Well, I forced myself to go to a screening, and when my name appeared, all I could think was, "Oh, my, how elegant that looks!" And no one laughed at all.""

"As I watched the main rally, I was thrilled to see people like Whoopi Goldberg risking the wrath of the neo-fascists in our midst and risking monetary losses and damage to her career"

"Let’s be truthful, the Holocaust isn’t about race, it’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about. These are two groups of white people,"

"So you want to bring this up? Being black, I recognize blackface, this I can say, OK? I know it when I see it."

"Well, when I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house. 'Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!'"

"For many, many, many years, there were not Jews in Israel. Okay?"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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?"

"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."

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

"I used to act dumb. It was an act. I am 26 years old, and that act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who looked up to me. I know now that I can make a difference, that I have the power to do that. I have been thinking that I want to do different things when I am out of here. I have become much more spiritual. God has given me this new chance."