20th-century Actress Quotes

While beauty made its own rules, it also created its own problems and disappointments.

It has made me feel very, very humble and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry.

Hattie McDaniel

They call me the Joan of Arc in the family, and they're always saying, 'Mother's off on another one of her things. She's off fighting the world. She's off tilting at her windmills. But once they came to see the play, I think they understood what all those months [of study and rehearsal] had been about. I sat down with them at one point and told them I'd never finished anything in my life, although I'd started an awful lot of things. I said whether the play was a success or a failure didn't make any difference. What was important was that I finished it, because that element of not finishing projects is a failure in my character. And I think they understood that.

Pat Carroll (actress)

I can't change you and you can't change me, but together we can work to change the world.

Well, we're movin' on up, to the East Side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin' on up, to the East Side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

It is difficult to get organic food at most restaurants, so when possible, eat at home. When not, do your best.

More than anything else, my mother wanted to be an actress - a famous actress - which in the 1950s was all about being young, sexy, and available. She was all that, and more. She had big blue eyes, alabaster skin, a heart-shaped face, a beautiful figure. She was just a knockout.

Meredith Baxter

I would say just be diligent and don't take no for an answer. It's not easy, and it took me a significant amount of time to get people to take me seriously or even consider me. I kept turning up and I just had a thick skin and didn't let it get to me when people rejected me. As long as you keep going and keep a positive attitude, it'll happen. It sounds generic, but I really believe in that.

I like what's happening to me now in every way. When you're twenty, you handle it a lot differently than when you're thirty—and I'm thirty-three. I was naïve enough to think it would be easy to get here. It wasn't.

Michelle Phillips

I was caught in a private cycle of sadness and the only conceivable relief I could find was in the telling.

Throughout the journey of my life, I have maintained a strong faith in the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity. I deeply believe in one's own positive will to overcome even the most daunting challenges.

There's always someone to tell you you have to. Wrong. Don't. Rather, spend time finding out who you really are. Work on being more of that. A lot better than the futile gotta change treadmill, which never really ends.

The entire repertoire of our life experiences can be accessed and activated from the body in movement …every part and function of the body can also be understood as metaphors for the expression of our being

Over the course of my career as both an actress and an author, I have met many wanna-bes. I distinguish the wannas from the gonnas because the WBs all think someone else is to blame for their problems.... By contrast, GBs say: 'What? There's no door here? I'll build one.

Often I used my gut instinct to ask the questions and get the answers I thought the audience wanted to hear. Sometimes the interviewees said things that surprised even them.

Being is mortal insistence in a complete and perfect state, lacking no essential characteristic. Everything you need, you got. Perfect. Maybe not yet realized, but perfect, complete.

We are beautiful, imaginative and gifted people, and we owe it to ourselves and to our future generations to restore, to recreate this beauty. We must begin building cultural centers where we can enjoy being free, open and black, where we can find out how talented we really are, where we can be what we were born to be, and not what we were brainwashed to be.

Barbara Ann Teer

When I was younger and started acting, I wasn't good at sports and didn't have any other special talents. Acting was my after-school activity. I never planned on growing up and becoming an actor. I always wanted to go to school and become a veterinarian so I think when I got older and suddenly realized that it was my passion, it was just a natural moment. I never felt pushed. My family has always supported me completely and kept me grounded. I never got lost in child Hollywood actor weirdness.

Shouldn't everything you do matter if you're bothering at all? Not to hold on when it's over, that's the trick.

On work:

It's a wonderful therapy. You don't have time to feel sorry for yourself.

Dorothy Dandridge

My only real solace? Sleep. In the absence of an explanation of anything, for everything, I live for it and what it can bring.

Advice to black actresses:

If you want to be an actor move to New York City. Don't go to Los Angeles. They have a machine out there, it makes little blonde girls, with long stringy hair, and they have wonderful careers.

Diahann Carroll

I go back and forth between [being a vegan and not being a vegan]. I try lots of different things. I really feel that you need to kind of listen to your body and what your body is telling you to eat. So I was a vegan for about two years. … Well, everything with being vegan and vegetarian is a really big commitment. You have to do what you feel is best and what you believe in and what your body is telling you that it needs. I really think everyone should do what's best for them, and what's best for me may not be best for someone else. But like I said, you just have to do what makes you feel good.

Many people don't understand the difference between a vocation and your own idea about something. A vocation is a call-one you don't necessarily want. The only thing I ever wanted to be was an actress. But I was called by God.

Simply put: time is fluid. The faster your world spins out of control, the slower timer crawls. The more time you need, the less you're sure to get. It's all relative