Someone said to me, ‘If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?’ My answer was then and still is, ‘If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.’
When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.
I have evolved my own exercises, for the muscles I wish to keep firm, and I know they are right for me because I can feel them putting the proper muscles into play as I exercise.
I have never cared especially for outdoor sports and have no desire to excel at tennis, swimming, or golf. I’ll leave those things to the men.
Depending upon my activities, I sleep between five and ten hours every night. I sleep in an extra-wide single bed, and I use only one heavy down comforter over me, summer or winter. I have never been able to wear pajamas or creepy nightgowns; they disturb my sleep.
My dinners at home are startlingly simple. Every night, I stop at the market near my hotel and pick up a steak, lamb chops or some liver, which I broil in the electric oven in my room. I usually eat four or five raw carrots with my meat, and that is all. I must be part rabbit; I never get bored with raw carrots.
I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president’s birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!’
I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.
I am trying to find myself. Sometimes that’s not easy.
If I close my eyes and think of Hollywood, all I see is one big varicose vein.
A woman can’t be alone. She needs a man. A man and a woman support and strengthen each other. She just can’t do it by herself.
Sometimes, wearing a scarf and a polo coat and no makeup and with a certain attitude of walking, I go shopping or just look at people living. But then, you know, there will be a few teenagers who are kind of sharp, and they’ll say, ‘Hey, just a minute. You know who I think that is?’ And they’ll start tailing me. And I don’t mind.
Only the public can make a star. It’s the studios who try to make a system out of it.
I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.
For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.
