Quotes

My God, there aren't any more movie stars, which is terrific with me, it's very healthy. A lot of love now occurs in the business, people helping each other to do good work, getting high on each other's success. Isn't that great?

[on the craft of acting] That's really what acting is: you imagine things, then you respond naturally to what you've imagined.

Every time you do a part you try to find out what it would really be like to be that person, no matter who she is.

[re Bob Rafelson, director of Five Easy Pieces (1970) and her character in it] Rafelson thought I might be too complex for Rayette, but I told him I'm essentially simple, that really everybody is essentially simple, that we are all just beings who, uh, be. Certainly Rayette can just be. dig her, she's not dumb, she's just not into thinking. I didn't have to know anybody like her to play her. I mean, I'm like her, in ways. Rayette enjoys things as she sees them, she doesn't have to add significances. She can just love the dog, love the cat. See? There are many things she does not know, but that's cool; she doesn't intrude on anybody else's trip. And she's going to survive. Do you understand me?

[on Alfred Hitchcock] We'd do limericks together. One day he pulled up his shirt to show me his belly-button - which he didn't have. He'd had an operation and when they sewed him up they took it away. His belly-button was gone!

I have to say Linda Kandel, Mascara (1999)'s director, is genius. Her aesthetics are remarkably high. I enjoyed my role immensely. I believe that when this new century closes, Linda Kandell will be honored as one of the best

[on The Day of the Locust (1975)] I suffered a lot; seven months of agony. I wish I'd never done it.

People who can only respect someone who scares them, they won't respect me. One has to originate a regard for certain things in order to respect me.

Many of the films I did, I just did as a working person for money with which to live. You know which ones they were. They were pretty much all mistakes.

It's such a mark against you if you're so inhumane that you wait till someone dies and then you make up stories about them. I think it's truly despicable. I can think of few things worse, really.