Observations by Bette Davis on her life and work

I think IMDb is the single best source for information about multiple entertainment industries, including film. Here is a selection of observations by Bette Davis. No other actor brought greater energy to a conversation, both on and off the screen.

She was nominated 11 times for an Academy Award for Actress in a Leading Role and won twice.

Please click here to learn more about her. Meanwhile….

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[when told by director Robert Aldrich that the studios wanted Joan Crawford as her co-star for Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)] I wouldn’t piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.
[in 1982] Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should ALL be bigger than life. Getting old is not for sissies.
Until you’re known in my profession as a monster, you’re not a star.
At 50, I thought proudly, “Here we are, half century!” Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black afro wig, wore black clothes, and hung a black wreath on my door.
I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.
[on rival Joan Crawford] She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.
[on her character in All About Eve (1950)] Margo Channing was not a bitch. She was an actress who was getting older and was not too happy about it. And why should she be? Anyone who says that life begins at 40 is full of it. As people get older their bodies begin to decay. They get sick. They forget things. What’s good about that?
Gay Liberation? I ain’t against it, it’s just that there’s nothing in it for me.
Success only breeds a new goal.
What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.
I have never known the great actor who… didn’t plan eventually to direct or produce. If he has no such dream, he is usually bitter, ungratified and eventually alcoholic.
There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.
I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as necessary to a man’s happiness as it is to a woman’s. If her marriage is satisfactory, a woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the moon.
The male ego, with few exceptions, is elephantine to start with.
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
I’d marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he’d be dead within a year.
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