Ava Gardner Quotes
"All I ever got out of any of my marriages was the two years
Artie Shaw financed on an analyst's couch."
"I have only one rule in acting -- trust the director and give him heart and soul."
"When I lose my temper, honey, you can't find it any place."
"I don't understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect."
"I must have seen more sunrises than any other actress in the history of Hollywood."
"I haven't taken an overdose of sleeping pills and called my agent. I haven't been in jail, and I don't go running to the psychiatrist every two minutes. That's something of an accomplishment these days."
"Nobody ever called it an intellectual profession."
"I couldn't imagine a better place [Australia] for making a film on the end of the world."
"Deep down, I'm pretty superficial."
"After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, "She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!"
"Everybody kisses everybody else in this crummy business all the time. It's the kissiest business in the world."
"What's the point? My face, shall we say, looks lived in."
"I made it as a star dressed, and if it aint dressed, I don't want it."
"I wish to live until 150 year-old but the day I'll die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other."
[On why she came out of retirement to appear on a prime time soap opera] "For the loot, honey, for the loot." [1985]
"What I'd really like to say about stardom is that it gave me everything I never wanted."
"I was a country girl. I still have a country girl's rather simple and ordinary values."
"Maybe I just didn't have the temperament for stardom. I'll never forget seeing Bette Davis at the Hilton in Madrid. I went up to her and said, 'Miss Davis, I'm Ava Gardner and I'm a great fan of yours.' And do you know, she behaved exactly as I wanted her to behave. 'Of course you are, my dear,' she said. 'Of course you are.' And she swept on. Now that's a star."
Although no one believes me, I have always been a country girl and still have a country girl's values.
