Top 100 Quotes About Bette Davis
#1. I love beautiful black-and-white movies - anything Bette Davis, especially 'Now', 'Voyager', 'Casablanca', 'Mildred Pierce'; anything by Orson Welles, Truffaut, or Godard; and 'Paper Moon' by Peter Bogdanovich.
Suzan-Lori Parks
#2. Bette Davis had a phrase that called it "cigarette smoking acting" .
Joe Eszterhas
#3. I think one of my favourite films is 'Dark Victory' with Bette Davis. Why? She was so wonderful in that film. And maybe I just want a good cry once in a while without having to go through a divorce.
Debbie Reynolds
#4. Beauty is subjective: Bette Davis wasn't beautiful, but she was more than beautiful.
Jacques Audiard
#5. I think one of my biggest influences is Bette Davis. I've seen almost every one of her films, and she's been very inspiring to me.
Elisabeth Moss
#6. I'd watch old movies with Judy Garland, Shirley Temple and Bette Davis and long to be part of that glamorous world. A lot of that glamour is gone now. In my own small way, I hope I'm bringing some of it back. But it would be great if I could inspire women to dress up.
Imelda May
#7. I always loved the bad girls in the movies. I loved Bette Davis; I loved Katherine Hepburn. I loved Ava Gardner.
Imelda May
#8. The Bette Davis Club," she said. "You've joined, you're a member. It's my metaphor for any female - and there've been zillions - who gets a crush on a gay fellow, dates a gay fellow, or heaven help us, marries a gay fellow.
Jane Lotter
#9. When asked what it takes to succeed in the acting profession, Bette Davis would answer, "the courage to be hated."
Frank Langella
#10. I just loved Bette Davis and the fact that I had a chance to work with her [on the 1979 TV movie Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter] was momentous.
Gena Rowlands
#11. I keep saying that, if Samuel L. Jackson and Bette Davis could have a baby, it would be Taraji P. Henson. To me, she's one of the greatest character actors of our generation, let alone leading ladies. She's just phenomenal in everything she does.
Jussie Smollett
#12. All I really want to do is just keep acting, and some of it will stink, and some of it will be really good, and maybe when I'm 85 and presenting an Oscar like Bette Davis did, I can look back and say, 'It was okay, I did all right.'
Whoopi Goldberg
#13. It's weird, because American films in the 1930s and '40s, particularly melodramas, were made for woman, from Bette Davis to Joan Crawford to Barbara Stanwyck to Katherine Hepburn, and for some reason we've taken a step backward in this sense.
James Gray
#14. I grew up on Bette Davis movies, and Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe.
Charlize Theron
#15. I loved all those classic figures from the '30s and '40s ... Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth. They had such glamour and style. I loved the movies of those times too - so much attention paid to details, lights, clothing, the way the studios would develop talent.
Grace Jones
#16. I was the kid that grew up watching Bette Davis films.
Rebecca Hall
#17. Bette Davis taught Hollywood to follow an actress instead of the actress following the camera, and she's probably the best movie actress there's ever been.
Elaine Stritch
#18. I've been close to Bette Davis for thirty-eight years - and I have the cigarette burns to prove it.
Henry Fonda
#19. In the movies, Bette Davis lights two cigarettes and hands the second one to James Cagney. It was just so glamorous and romantic.
Loni Anderson
#20. I always knew I was going to be successful in some way with films. I don't know why. I had no particular talent, but I always knew I was going to be sitting in a dining room with Lucille Ball and at a cocktail party with Bette Davis.
Robert Osborne
#21. I loved Bette Davis when I was little and when I was big and when I got old.
Gena Rowlands
#22. Oh, yes, we were on location with Another Man's Poison, which I wrote for Bette Davis.
Val Guest
#23. To Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Romy Schneider ... To all actresses who have played actresses, to all women who act, to all men who act and become women, to all the people who want to be mothers. To my mother.
- Dedication, Todo Sobre Mi Madre
Pedro Almodovar
#24. I'd love to play a femme fatale in a film noir. I'm thinking of one of those roles that Lauren Bacall or Bette Davis might have played. What I wouldn't like is to suddenly find myself being cast, as many senior actresses seem to be, as the abbess in a convent.
Diana Quick
#25. When I heard the gunshots, though, I knew - knew beyond the shadow of a doubt - that somewhere in Los Angeles Bette Davis was on the prowl and packing heat. ("Shadows From The Screen")
Richard Valley
#26. Looking is an important part of Stanwyck's acting: many performers have beautiful eyes (for example, Henry Fonda), or use their eyes expressively (most remarkably, perhaps, Bette Davis), but few use them so attentively to observe and survey others and the world [as Stanwyck].
Andrew Klevan
#27. My favorite actress of all times is Bette Davis in Dark Victory. I have seen it six or seven times, and I still cry.
Bettie Page
#28. Look, you're either loved or hated. Which is a good thing, as Bette Davis used to say.
Mario Cantone
#29. There will be no 'Mommie Dearest' in the lives of my children, and no books like the one the Crosby boy wrote about Bing, or Bette Davis's daughter has written. My children love me very much, and they are loved.
Don Ameche
#30. I adore Bette Davis and Vivien Leigh, but more because they were good actresses. That's what makes me interested in them, that they didn't present themselves as idols; they were just doing their jobs.
Imelda Staunton
#31. Outside the door, a teller with a blue rosette chomps on an apple and asks for my number. She smiles a thank you and reveals a ghastly, gaping tunnel of masticated apple, edge with violent mauve lipstick seemingly applied by Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.
Maddie Grigg
#32. People talk about the golden age of Hollywood because of how women were lit then. You could be Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and work well into your 50s, because you were lit and made into a goddess. Now, with everything being sort of gritty, women have this sense of their use-by date.
Cate Blanchett
#33. There's like this great thing that Bette Davis said when someone asked her, "How do you get into Hollywood?" "Take Fountain!"
Winona Ryder
#34. Back in the days of Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis, beauty wasn't the be-all and end-all it is today.
Marcia Gay Harden
#35. I always felt that Bette Davis was one of the great screen actresses who never really got her due - she won two Oscars, but the last was in 1938, and that was really before all the great work that she did.
Robert Osborne
#36. I think the great power of Bette Davis was she always knew who she was. She had an obligation to herself and her audience. When you think of what she was compelled to do, the power she put on the screen, the fact that she took upon herself a much greater task ...
James Woods
#37. My favourite actors are all dead or dying. I just love Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn - I was named after her - and Cary Grant. I just love old black and white movies and the stars in them. It must have been a great time to be in Hollywood.
Katharine Isabelle
#38. It's more interesting to put yourself in the place of Bette Davis than Irene Dunne, I guess.
Charles Busch
#39. (On Bette Davis) Even when I was carrying a gun, she scared the be-jesus out of me.
Humphrey Bogart
#40. Even as a kid, I was more enchanted watching Bette Davis than Errol Flynn.
Richard LaGravenese
#41. I think mystery is kind of great. I don't know anything about Bette Davis or Katharine Hepburn or Ava Gardner - not really - and I like that. I love watching their movies because they're my personal movie stars. I don't know what they eat and who their trainer is.
Rachel Weisz
#42. Bette Davis, she was so brilliant and one of my heroes, but she worked a ton, and then she didn't get All About Eve [1950] until the last minute. Claudette Colbert was supposed to be Margo Channing, but then she broke her back and couldn't do it. That allowed Davis to play her age.
Winona Ryder
#43. The casting couch? There's only one of us who ever made it to stardom without it, and that was Bette Davis.
Claudette Colbert
#44. I could never understand the attraction of Bette Davis. I always preferred Jane Russell.
Richard Griffiths
#45. I watch an awful lot of old Hollywood movies - I'll devour anything with Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. My absolute favourite is 'Sunset Boulevard' starring Gloria Swanson.
Amanda Donohoe
#46. When I was a kid, it was Bette Davis. She was my idol. I used to cut school and sit in the back of the theater; of course, I would have snuck in because I couldn't afford a ticket.
Lauren Bacall
#47. I get up at seven for the make-up, Rita Hayworth at six, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis at five. I don't want to know the time when I'll have to come to the studio even earlier.
Grace Kelly
#48. Bette Davis had very strong opinions and was not afraid to express them. She wasn't afraid of anything that I ever saw. And she was so funny. She's just funny and she was laughing all the time.
Gena Rowlands
#49. I don't think I have the image that say, Judy Garland has, or Bette Davis.
Julie Andrews
#50. Bette [Davis] and I are good friends. There's nothing I wouldn't say to her face - both of them.
Tallulah Bankhead
#51. If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family.
Quentin Crisp
#52. Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.
Bette Davis
#53. The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.
Bette Davis
#54. An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring ... I ought to know.
Bette Davis
#55. As a female I think it's a terrible hindrance in business. I think it's a terrible hindrance for any female to have a lot of intelligence in private life, but I think in business sometimes it's even worse because there's deep resentment.
Bette Davis
#56. Actually, I think business women are better women at home, if you want to know the truth because you do understand what goes into a day's work out in the world, a very nerve-racking affair.
Bette Davis
#57. Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.
Bette Davis
#58. May each of my grandsons know, at an early age, what his life's ambition is
and may he be successful in his pursuit of that goal.
Bette Davis
#59. I may not have been wearing a mink coat, but I was traveling with a dog. That should have made you think I was an actress!
Bette Davis
#60. I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.
Bette Davis
#61. If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it.
Bette Davis
#62. 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.
Bette Davis
#63. Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.
Bette Davis
#64. There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.
Bette Davis
#66. You should know me well enough by now to know I don't ask for things I don't think I can get.
Bette Davis
#67. Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother's old farmhouse
all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic.
Bette Davis
#68. The out-of-work actor wears out more than shoe leather. The very sensibilities that make him an artist are shattered by the disregard he is shown as a human being.
Bette Davis
#69. What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.
Bette Davis
#70. Joan Crawford is a movie star. I am an actress.
Bette Davis
#71. The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency.
Bette Davis
#72. The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead.
Bette Davis
#73. Mother of three; divorcee; American. Twenty years experience as an actress in motion pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumour would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway). References upon request.
Bette Davis
#74. If everybody likes you, you are not a very interesting person.
Bette Davis
#75. [On gay men:] Let me say, a more artistic, appreciative group of people for the arts does not exist ... They are more knowledgeable, more loving of the arts. They make the average male look stupid.
Bette Davis
#77. That's me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.
Bette Davis
#78. It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.
Bette Davis
#79. I think men have got to change an awful lot. They still prefer the little woman.
Bette Davis
#81. You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? 'She did it the hard way.'
Bette Davis
#82. I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.
Bette Davis
#83. From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.
Bette Davis
#85. There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.
Bette Davis
#86. 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.
Bette Davis
#87. Playing our parts. Yes, we all have to do that and from childhood on, I have found that my own character has been much harder to play worthily and far harder at times to comprehend than any of the roles I have portrayed.
Bette Davis
#88. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.
Bette Davis
#89. I didn't forget your breakfast. I didn't bring your breakfast. Because you didn't eat your din-din.
Bette Davis
#90. I wouldnt piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire
Bette Davis
#91. Gay Liberation? I ain't against it, it's just that there's nothing in it for me.
Bette Davis
#92. I think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative.
Bette Davis
#94. In this rat-race everybody's guilty till proved innocent!
Bette Davis
#95. They say that in Hollywood one can't be honest, but I think honesty counts in Hollywood just as much as it does anywhere else. I think it's just too much trouble to be dishonest and keep up with yourself.
Bette Davis
#97. I've always liked men better than women.
Bette Davis
#98. I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.
Bette Davis
#99. There is a certain ecstasy in wanting things you can't get.
Bette Davis
#100. I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable ... I suppose I'm larger than life.
Bette Davis
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