Actresses From Illinois

"Never apologize for being funny because you'll be sorry when you stop getting laughs."

"“Well, I mean, if a joke or humor is bawdy, it's got to be funny enough to warrant it. You can't just have it bawdy or dirty just for the sake of being that — it's got to be funny.”"

"Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong."

"You can always tell about somebody by the way they put their hands on an animal,"

"“It's your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humour in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver.”"

"“Accentuate the positive, not the negative. It sounds so trite, but a lot of people will pick out something to complain about, rather than say, ‘Hey, that was great!’ It’s not hard to find great stuff if you look.”"

"You don't luck into integrity. You work at it."

"“Kindness and consideration of somebody besides yourself keeps you feeling young.”"

"“If one has no sense of humor, one is in trouble.”"

"“There’s no formula. Keep busy with your work and your life. You can’t become a professional mourner. It doesn’t help you or others. Replay the good times. Be grateful for the years you had.”"

"You don’t just luck into integrity. You work at it."

"Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do."

"“Laughter keeps everyone feeling wonderful.”"

"Get at least eight hours of beauty sleep, nine if you’re ugly,"

"“Everybody needs a passion. That’s what keeps life interesting. If you live without passion, you can go through life without leaving any footprints.”"

"“If everyone took personal responsibility for their animals, we wouldn’t have a lot of the animal problems that we do."

"Butterflies are like woman – we may look pretty and delicate, but baby, we can fly through a hurricane."

"There's no formula. Keep busy with your work and your life. Keep the person in your heart all the time. Replay the good times. Be grateful for the years you had."

"Friendship takes time and energy if it’s going to work. You can luck into something great, but it doesn’t last if you don’t give it proper appreciation. Friendship can be so comfortable, but nurture it — don’t take it for granted."

"I'm not looking forward to death; it's important to live while we are here. But those who have died, my mother said, now they know the secret. And someday we all will."

"“Keep the other person’s well being in mind when you feel an attack of soul-purging truth coming on.”"

"When I was a little girl I dreamed of being a princess. Little did I know then that all these dreams could and would come true."

"Mary Astor said nothing but stared a lot over the top of her glasses, and I thought this was a woman that no one will get close to. To my surprise she asked everyone to autograph the front page of her script. She was collecting autographs, she said, from every television play she had ever done. It was the first intimation of what it took me a long time to realize: She nearly always likes the people she works with. What I had taken to be offhandedness was her way of covering her terror of live television. Anyway, in that ill-lit ballroom, there she was, a good deal older than when she had won her Academy Award but not much changed; the darkly red hair in the mannish cut, that profile, the freckles, eyes the color of cracked hazelnuts. And the unique voice, a cello voice, Edith Cortright's voice in Dodsworth, a voice that has a trick to it: It can make a banal line seem intelligent; it has had experience doing that."

"Nobody gave me anything. I had to fight to do scripts and fight not to do scripts and go on suspension and sue, and that's what saved me. Take Mary Astor. I had to fight to get her into ', and she won the Oscar, and then did The Maltese Falcon and had a whole new career. She was beautiful, and a fine actress, but she could never be sure of that, because she was so beautiful that everything was handed to her right from the beginning only because of her beauty. So that led to insecurity and drinking and terrible scandals, and she became her own worst enemy."

"Mary is un-actressy, though, herself, one of the least actressy actresses I have ever known. She is no more given to ostentatious behavior than she is to big hats. In fact, the impression she gives is more that of a successful woman lawyer; that has something to do with her native intelligence. [...] [A]s a person there is so little sham in her that you wonder at her spending forty years working in artificial light. It has always been the work she likes and not the limelight. "Let's work," she says at rehearsal and if there is too much chat about it, "Let's get back to work.""

"Another offering that is on the grim side but will hold your interest as a dramatic story in A Place Called Saturday, by Mary Astor. The former screen actress tells the story of a rape—and its effect on not only the victim, an Arizona housewife, but also on her husband and her "friends," one of whom, as it turns out, is "is going steady," as they used to say, with the rapist. There's everything here, from impotence to abortion, and Miss Astor is rapidly developing, from book to book, no mean ability at pulling out emotional stops."

"Yes, I do miss my "family." That great big family I accumulated over the years. [...]. We shared the ephemeral quality, the sense of impermanence of the medium we worked in. Often when a scene was being worked over in rehearsal, experimenting, nit-picking about words and moves, somebody would break up the over-seriousness with the question, "Who's waiting for this opera, anyway?" and we'd all laugh and realize it was all something that shouldn't be taken too seriously—and yet, if it wasn't taken seriously it wasn't any good. I miss these people who were part of my life—co-workers, co-actors. Friends. And I watch the new ones, the new breed, and when they do something great and fine, I'm proud. And when they do things that are blatantly bad, I am ashamed. But I can't disinherit them, for no matter how much they may feel that it is a whole new thing, it isn't really. It is a continuation. For what they have today was built upon the great and fine and the blatantly bad jobs that we did—we old movie-makers."

"If I could only get to see Mary Astor! Mary Astor was always my favorite actress. [...] When Mary Astor sat down to play the piano, she bloody well played the thing."

"Under contract, for some weird reason, you get typed, stuck into the same part, over and over again. In my case, it was mother roles. It isn't that I didn't like being a mother: I had two wonderful children of my own. But Metro's Mothers never did anything but mothering. They never had a thought in their heads except their children. They sacrificed everything: they were domineering or else the "Eat up all your spinach" type. Clucking like hens. Eventually every actor on the Metro lot called me Mom. I was in my late thirties and it played hell with my image of myself. And my image of the Diary days went right down the drain."

"I think "laconic" is a good word for and for his technique of direction. No big deal about communication with John. Terse, pithy, to the point. Very Irish, a dark personality, a sensitivity which he did everything to conceal, but once he said to me while I was doing a scene with Ray Massey, "Make it scan, Mary." And I said to myself, "Aha! I know you now!"."

"There is a kind of attitude, a manner of speaking, a look in the eye, the kind of smile you get, the embrace from a director or producer that carries the most depressing hypocrisy: "Hey! You know you're still looking pretty sexy!" "Wow, you still got it, you know!" "You haven't got a worry in the world—you can be right up there again." Translated, in means "The old girl still looks pretty good." But the old girl, now nearing fifty, is not a young girl, is not sexy and has no intention of competing with anybody. Competition has never been my thing, and I wasn't sure I wanted to be right up there again. [...] I wanted to put my craft, what I had learned, my experiences, to work. The myth of Sunset Boulevard, with the old glamorous actress looking at all her old movies in the sumptuous, decaying mansion, is just that. It may have been taken from a factual story of some kind of nut—but believe me, that isn't where old actresses go!"

"When I think of Mary Astor, which is quite often, that prayer that was recited over our heads at College comes to mind. "Lord" (or some such), "who has granted that when two or three are gathered together in Thy Name, Thou wilt grant their requests . . ." And I have thought how strange it is, and how indisputable, that when two or three who love the cinema are gathered together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played. And all this in spite of—or because of—the fact that she was never exactly a star. [...] [She] conceive[d] of her performance from the start in the terms the author laid down, not in terms of her own personality. This is why every performance she gave has the ring of truthfulness and the depth of reality. She was never a good liar."

"Acting was my parents' idea for me. I happened to have a very pretty face. It was a very pretty face indeed, and it was sold to the highest bidder, that's all. I wanted to be a writer. I didn't know that until about 15 years ago, and I've been writing ever since. And that's about all I want to do."

"That guy over there, Ray Massey. He can put his boots under my bed any day of the week."

"My father often used to rebuke me by saying, "You're almost nine years old" (and then "ten," and then "eleven," and "twelve") "and you haven't learned a thing!" Well, here I was, fifty years old and I still hadn't learned a thing! My father's rebuke had always seemed to imply a promise that years, the very accumulation of years, would bring experience and understanding. So, at whatever age I was, I wished I were older. At seventeen I longed to be twenty-five. At twenty I wanted to be a woman of the world of thirty. At thirty I read that the French thought a woman did not reach full maturity of beauty and attractiveness until she was forty. Finally, at forty-five, I decided that the whole thing was a pack of lies. Where was the "serenity" that the years were to bring? Where was :"the cooling of passion's blood?" I realized that I, who leaned on so many people and things, had been leaning even on the abstraction of time."

"As far as acting was concerned, I simply did what I was told. This I was good at. For too many years I had searched for cues as to my father's disposition and desires. And this ability called forth praise of "How beautifully she takes direction!" You bet I did! In silents the direction went on during the action: after the camera turned, I'd hear, "Now look at him, Mary—that's it—you can't believe it! Tears come to your eyes—reach out and touch his arm—gently, gently." The more experienced actors would refuse anything but the minimum of offstage cueing, like perhaps, "You hear the door slam," but I wouldn't have been able to carry a whole scene without help. Not because I'd forget what we had done in rehearsal, but because I was afraid I'd do it wrong. You see, I was "stupid"—I really thought I was—and that was the role I played in life. It was very safe."

"Tuesday night we had a dinner at ‘21’ and on the way to see ' he did kiss me—and I don’t think either of us remember much what the show was about. We played kneesies during the first two acts, my hand wasn’t in my own lap during the third. It’s been years since I’ve felt up a man in public, but I just got carried away. Afterwards we had a drink someplace and then went to a little flat in 73rd Street where we could be alone, and it was all very thrilling and beautiful. Once George lays down his glasses, he is quite a different man. His powers of recuperation are amazing, and we made love all night long. It all worked perfectly, and we shared our fourth climax at dawn. I didn’t see much of anybody else the rest of the time—we saw every show in town, had grand fun together and went frequently to 73rd Street where he fucked the living daylights out of me.”"

"If I ever do make Beau Brummel, I want that girl to play Lady Margery Alvanley."

"Turn her loose, Robert. You might learn something."

"From the time I was little, I always felt like an outsider. I always felt nervous and uncomfortable with myself."

"What I've realized is that, especially in Los Angeles, a lot of people are on some kind of path, even if they're not completely conscious of it. I've sort of always been on a path to find more peace, more security within myself. I've always felt like I needed something to help me feel better."

"If I was blond and tall, then I would have had 10 times the competition. I auditioned steadily and performed for everyone who would hire me. Now I am in a position to pick and choose my roles."

"I feel so fortunate to have gotten into the whole voiceover world; it’s been my bread and butter. They’re the nicest people on the planet—there are no huge, raging egos in that world, for whatever reason. And I was able to work all through my pregnancies, practically up to the time my water broke. It’s just been a joy. I had these voices in my head from growing up with immigrant parents and listening to them talk. Then just goofing around and playing around with different things, finding out what you could do with your voice. When people ask me for advice I always say, just have a lot of different tools in your bag and come up with a lot of different characters and really know them inside and out."

"I have been a passionate animal activist for many years now. It's something I believe in and I feel strongly that people with a modicum of success should try and bring a voice to help bring more awareness to causes they believe in, and animals have no voice! So it's vitally important that we raise awareness for them. … I think most people love animals and if there was more awareness and less ignorance about what goes into making a fur coat, for example, people wouldn't even consider buying it."

"One of the reasons I became so involved in activism for primate conservation was not just from the books and movie’s I saw, but from looking into the eyes of a chimpanzee in a zoo. I’ll never forget it... it changed my life."

"Frances McDormand, or Fran, as she is called in regular life, cuts a handsome figure on the street. She is 60 and sexy in the manner of women who have achieved total self-possession. She eschews makeup unless she is working, doesn’t dye her hair and despises the nips, tucks and lifts that have become routine for women of her profession. Her clothes are well made — she loves clothes — but utilitarian and comfortable. … Over the course of her 36-year career, McDormand has played women who are attractive but rarely beautiful, magnetic but thorny — and, she notes, they’re usually the supporting player in a man’s story. To this day she is best known for Marge, but Marge had much less screen time than people remember. Her slightly daffy good-heartedness serves as the foil for the murderous men who occupy most of Fargo … In the last 10 years, something shifted for McDormand: Right as she hit the age when most actresses begin disappearing for lack of roles or moving to the edges of story lines, she moved to first billing. For decades, she excelled at the work of embroidering the lives of women who aren’t deemed appealing enough to watch for two hours straight, and rather than aging into a different acting type, she has taken it upon herself to put peripheral women at the center."

"My politics are private, but many of my feminist politics cross over into my professional life. Because I portray female characters — so I have the opportunity to change the way people look at them. Even if I wasn’t consciously doing that, it would happen anyway, just because of how I present as a woman, or as a person. I present in a way that’s not stereotypical, even if I’m playing a stereotypical role. … I can’t subtract that from myself anymore. I could when I was younger. … That’s another great thing about getting older. Your life is written on your face."

"I was never that involved in the machine of press and publicity as an actor because I’ve always kind of worked on the margins of my profession … And then when my son was younger and it did get a little bit more intrusive, I tried to come to terms with how I was personally going to handle someone coming up to me on the street and wanting some part of my time. … Now what I do — because this is how I live — when someone approaches me and says, "Can I have your autograph," I say: "No, I’ve retired from that part of the business. I just act now." … I say: "What’s your name?" … I touch them. I look at them. I have a real exchange … I’m not an actor because I want my picture taken. I’m an actor because I want to be part of the human exchange."

"Its way overdue but at least its happening and I couldn’t be more happy —and to see all those women who had been nominated or had won standing up in the audience — it was a very smart thing for her to do."

"I just found out about this last week. There is — has always been available to all — everybody … that does a negotiation on a film, an "inclusion rider" which means that you can ask for and/or demand at least 50 percent diversity in not only the casting, but also the crew. And so, the fact that we — that I just learned that after 35 years of being in the film business … we're not going back. So the whole idea of women "trending" — no. No "trending". African Americans "trending" — no. No "trending". It changes now, and I think the inclusion rider will have something to do with that."