Actresses From Los Angeles

"It’s an honor to represent military families on the show. These families sacrifice so much and are so committed and graceful with how they handle situations. To send your loved one away, not knowing if they’re going to come back or not. To still hold your pride and still keep it together, these women and these families are just very brave. I’m very fortunate and very excited to be a part of something that speaks to many of our citizens."

"In my view, I’ve had tons of success but, in the way the world views success and they expect Idols to do, mine has just been a longer journey to get there. And I’m grateful for it. It just makes the journey that much sweeter in the end."

"It’s been released on video, and I have a copy—however, there is an important scene missing. They cut out a big sequence. I cannot remember if it was cut before the film was released, or if it has since been edited out. It was where I had fallen in the river and Uncle Tom saved me—it set up a good relationship between Uncle Tom and Little Eva. The director, Harry Pollard, hated James B. Lowe, or ‘Tom’, who, interestingly, called me several years ago. He was down in Long Beach, from Europe where he normally lived. He tried to get together with me, but it didn’t work out. He was a real sweetheart.""

"I consider myself a professional who acts, not to express my soul or elevate the cinema but to entertain and get paid for it."

"I don’t believe it. You know, after a picture’s been out for awhile, stories seem to circulate—stories that can no longer be verified, because everyone connected with the incident is dead. People will say anything to sell a book. As for our work with the dinosaurs, it was all done with a backscreen, so none of the actors saw the monsters, until we saw the picture. I liked doing it! It was a crazy picture, and I liked working with Richard Denning and Barton MacLane. They dyed my hair red, but left Denning’s blond locks alone. It’s been so long ago I don’t remember why they did it that way. ‘Unknown Island’ was one of the fun ones."

"Even though we stayed on location, I didn’t get to know him. We were too tired, and too dirty (Laughs) to socialize in the evening. Besides that, I don’t recall there being any place to even go at the time. It surely has grown some, but in those days, there was literally nothing there. So, the cast would take a shower, jump into bed (separate beds, of course) (Laughs), grab their script, and study their lines for the next day’s shoot."

"It was filmed up in Lone Pine, halfway between the Valley and Mammoth Lake, about a three hour drive, so we stayed up there. We shot it in the Spring, or maybe the Fall, because the weather wasn’t too bad. You have the danger of rains when you shoot then, but in the summer, it would be too hot. The desert scenes were shot just beside Lone Pine…that area resembled a desert (the dunes near Olancha—ed.) Fortunately, we didn’t have to go to Death Valley."

"I played a character called Lorabelle Larkin in ‘Slaughter Trail’ with Gig Young. We made that picture twice. It was around the time Howard Hughes bought RKO-Radio. Howard DaSilva was originally cast in the part Brian Donlevy eventually did. Donlevy was cast after Howard Hughes said DaSilva was a Commie and was kicked off the picture! We reshot virtually the whole film, because Howard Hughes ‘didn’t want no Commies in his movies.This made the picture a financial pleasure. It was way out in left field, a strange offbeat picture, but one of my personal favorite."

"Hollywood men are a lot of phony balonies."

"We filmed in 1956. This was five years after I dated Bob [Robert Taylor] and she filed for divorce. I accidentally put my coat on her chair and she tore into me with a vengeance in front of everyone. She never mentioned Bob, but she resented me for going out with him. She had no other reason for hating me."

"The star was Gene Autry. I had heard tales he had a way with the ladies, but luckily for me, there was no problem. I think he must have known I was dating Clark Gable, and he’d better not try anything with me. That makes any man secondary, after you've dated the best."

"Idaho we shot on location in Kernville. Roy Rogers was the star, and he was a nice man to work with. This was before Dale Evans, though. Roy was married to another girl who shortly thereafter passed on."

"And it is ‘Flame of Barbary Coast,’ and not ‘Flame of the Barbary Coast’. Almost everybody gets that title wrong. Ann Dvorak was in it…a big picture, a long shooting schedule…I was not under contract to Republic, but after I left MGM in ‘42 and started to freelance, Republic and Universal used me quite often after that. Yates seemed to like me."

"I made so many pictures, that many are a blur in my mind.” One that isn’t a blur is “The Last Command” made for Republic. “We made ours before Duke made his ‘Alamo’. There was a beef with Herbert Yates over the title. We shot it on location in Brackettville, TX, and the John Wayne version used our left-over sets. Although we were in Texas, I never got to San Antonio, so I never saw the ‘real’ Alamo—just the one constructed in Brackettville."

"The Audie Murphy people—his foundation, have been haunting me about him. But I didn’t know him at all. I’d work, go home, and not socialize with these people. The whole picture is very vague to me."

"That was with Richard Arlen, who had been a big star in silents, he’d slipped into the Bs by this time. We shot that on location up in Lone Pine."

"I am a Mormon. Dad was and I was raised in that religion and during the '30s and '40s, I strayed and got into others things. I drank, I smoked, and did things totally opposite, not even thinking of what I had known during childhood. I remember in 1958, two elders came to my door and I began to think about my upbringing and what I learned and than I started to meditate on that and I found solace once again and realized what I had been neglecting, if not forgetting, all those years when I was out of circulation. I returned to my Mormon roots around Christmastime that year and became very active in the church again. I'm glad those young man dropped in and reminded me about what I'd been missing because if not I would've missed out on what the true "big picture" is. (Note the quote about being a Mormon is not sourced and is disputed: “Deleted quote about Virginia Grey being a member of the LDS church. I am her biographer and have spoken to members of her immediate family. They don't know why that quote was attributed to her. She was a lifelong devout Catholic.” See, main article history.)"

"Just make the point we come from the water. It's the most natural medium in the world. It's the only sport you can do from your first bath to your last without hurting yourself."

"You can work out in a pool and sweat, but you don't smell. In the water you are weightless. You are ageless. It feels exhilarating to get wet. And you know the water is a very sexy medium. Why do you think people always get in a hot tub?"

"I'll bet if I compare notes with Junie Allyson and Debbie Reynolds and anyone else who's had more than one marriage, the fact is that you fall in love and it's so wonderful to think about something other than yourself and whether the script's right for you and who's going to be your leading man, that you don't really ask yourself questions about the fellow. He's just wonderful looking and he dances well and you have a wonderful time and it's fun to go out, and all of a sudden you're in a lifelong marriage."

"Adam set the bar so high for portraying the role of Batman, He was wonderful, spot on, with a twinkle in his eye. He had it all -- looks, charm, intelligence, I could go on and on. In conversation, he was very animated and once told me that Batman was the father that everyone wanted! I never thought of it that way! He had a great way of playing that 'tongue-in-cheek' nature in so much of the dialogue. I had a long, engaging conversation with him and his wife, Marcelle, about their life in Montana, If I had to describe him in a word or two, they would be 'stellar' and 'exemplar,' qualities that we want to encourage in ourselves and in young people."

"My kind of female power can’t be owned. I may feign enslavement, but I never let myself be unloved, even by myself, that would not do. I rarely argue - I consider. I wait till enough information is in and then the answer, answers itself. My imagination does tolerate empty space. Female power does not disagree with a compliment. Compliments shall be relished, like rich chocolate, like an inside caress. I make time to feel it, all the way up and down my body. Let the world please you. Use your female power. It was set up that way."

"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."

"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."

"Having such a large family can be challenging. I won't deny that. But they're just great kids so you just deal with everything. There's very few things in my life that I regret. If I could change anything, maybe I wish I had learnt and done certain things earlier. I would have liked to have continued in school longer. I would have been interested in living in Africa and perhaps trained as a pediatrician."

"I get it now. I didn't get it then. That life is about losing and about doing it as gracefully as possible...and enjoying everything in between."

"You learn by going where you have to go."

"I learned that you can't truly own anything, that true ownership comes only in the moment of giving."

"Rage and grief are savage companions, but despair is the final undoing."

"Well, I didn't lose my faith in God and in my own commitment to what I think my religion means to me but I did lose faith in Rome. I was horrified that the Pope at the time of the Rwandan massacre— this is a Catholic country, Rwanda—made no attempt to go there and to halt the killing. And I mean, who among us would not have tried? And on the contrary many of the perpetrators were actually sheltered. So I disengaged with my faith at that point. And then when I went to Darfur some 10 years later, by then I had cast away any allegiance to Rome and I saw -- you know, if only we'd had a Pope like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for example, who was engaged on the issues that concerned the most needy of humanity."

"On this planet there are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn’t bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it’s hard to see, it’s important to understand that these people exist. I’m talking to you now because they can’t and I hope to be a voice for them. They need support."

"If you're brought up a Catholic and you've had 13 years of convent education with nuns, there's no way you ever get out from under that. I've accepted that fact about myself so there are certain things—like my lost saint—that sometimes are not so lost."

"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!"

"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."

"Modeling exposed me to the best designers and people of all different cultures, but I always knew I belonged on the other side of the camera. When I modeled, I saved my money. A lot of people thought I was cheap. I was saving to invest in people."

"I called Planned Parenthood and begged them to give me their best argument and all they could come up with that it is really just a clump of cells and if you get it early enough it doesn’t even look like a baby. Well, we’re all clumps of cells and the unborn does not look like a baby the same way the baby does not look like a teenager, a teenager does not look like a senior citizen. That unborn baby looks exactly the way human beings are supposed to look at that stage of development. It doesn’t suddenly become a human being at a certain point in time. I’ve also asked leading scientists across our country to please show me some shred of evidence that the unborn is not a human being. I didn’t want to be pro-life, but this is not a woman’s rights issue but a human rights issue. If I see someone abusing a child I am going to stand up against that, and that’s how I feel about abortion. Women are not given all the facts, they’re told it is a harmless procedure and now it has turned into such a political football."

"I have never seen anyone epitomize glamour and grace and professionalism like she did."

"I loved Heidi Klum, but now I know Kathy Ireland is on the cover of Forbes, so that’s pretty amazing as well."

"I really actually would like to model my career after someone like Kathy Ireland. I think she just built this incredible empire, but she honors the fact that Sports Illustrated was the platform that got her to that place"

"[About the 1991 film Diet for a New America narrated by John Robbins] It just changed my life, to see that film. When I saw it, I pledged to become vegetarian immediately, with the plan of becoming vegan. … My goal was always to become vegan, but it was a longer road. … I envy the kids going vegan now; they have so many different resources. … I think, at first, it struck me from an animal perspective, but the argument for the environment and for your own health also struck a cord with me. So it hit me on three different levels."

"There are some issues I'm more conservative on. As a parent, I'm concerned that there are so many young, young, young kids — like 12 years old — that are starting to have sex."

"We treat sex so casually and use it for everything but what it is — which is ultimately making another human being with thoughts and feelings and rights who will grow up to be an adult."

"I started watching reality shows and being horrified at people signing up to be humiliated in front of the entire country. … I saw one show, The Amazing Race, in which people were eating spicy soup and vomiting and crying. Why would you do that? Also, I was fascinated by these actors and actresses who would sign up to be followed around by cameras in their life. You become a celebrity, not because of your work or what you do, but because you have no privacy. I've been careful to keep my life separate because it's important to me to have privacy and for my life not to be a marketing device for a movie or a TV show. It's worth more than that. I'm worth more than that."

"I think that it’s a very smart decision actually to have women that are capable and intelligent because it appeals to women. You know, so it’s not only a film for fifteen-year-old boys. It’s a film that can relate to a lot of people on a lot of levels. A lot of my girlfriends like it because of the romance or like Scarlett is in the trailer and it is appealing. 'Ooh who is she?' and it doesn’t look gratuitous. It looks like there are interesting women in the movie."

"I was so bad with the food and alcohol in Nashville. If you saw me naked compared to what I looked like when I did Iron Man 2, when I was exercising every day — I'll get it back together, but I've never eaten so much fried food and white flour in my life, ever."

"You can’t be prejudiced just because it’s big budget."

"He (Tony Stark) is flawed, but he’s a great man. He goes through this whole incredible resurrection. He really takes adversity and uses it as an opportunity and that’s a sign of greatness."

"I thought being invisible would be great. Then I started thinking about it. It would be a bit creepy standing around and watching people. Don't you think? Then I thought a power that allowed you to light fires would be handy. I would be dangerous if you couldn't handle it, but I always have trouble at home finding matches to light candles. So if I could just walk around and light the candles with my finger, that would be kind of cool."

"I feel like when I work that is my time to express myself and to be creative and to really delve into somebody else’s mind, heart and psyche. That is my thing."