Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress of film, television and theatre. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres; from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were romantic dramas.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading actresses, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and her confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She was the first actor to receive 10 Academy Award nominations and the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her career went through several periods of decline, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and thrice divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 film, television and theater roles to her credit.
In 1999, Davis was placed second, behind Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of all time.
“If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.”
“I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.”
“My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.”
“Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.”
“Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder-- so you can move faster-- you forget you'll need them when you go back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common whether we like it or not. Being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter what other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner-- or turn around in bed-- and there he is. Without that you're not a woman. You're someone with a French provincial office-- or a book full of clippings. But you're not a woman. Slow curtain. The end. (from "All About Eve")”
“Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.”
“Getting old is not for sissies.”
“You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.”
“Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars. - Now, Voyager”
“I never wished I’d been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration.”
“I'd like ta kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.”
“Success only breeds a new goal”
“If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.”
“A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.”
“Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.”
“I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my makeup box.”
“It's better to be hated for who you are, than to be loved for someone you're not. It's a sign of your worth sometimes, if you're hated by the right people.”
“Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.”
“I am just too much.”
“I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.”
“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”
“I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.”
“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lovely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”
“I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.”
“Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.”
“This became a credo of mine...attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.”
“The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead.”
“Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child.He needs guidance.If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.”
“Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn't do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.”
“There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.”
“You should know me well enough by now to know I don't ask for things I don't think I can get.”
“Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone- but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, to yielding.”
“I'de luv to kiss ya but I just washed my hair.”
“Everybody has a heart. Except some people.”
“Old age ain't no place for sissies.”
“If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.”