I never wanted to be Marilyn – it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.
I don’t mind living in a man’s world, as long as I can be a woman in it.
You never know what life is like, until you have lived it.
I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.
Always remember to smile and look up at what you have in life.
I’ll think I have a few wonderful friends and all of a sudden, ooh, here it comes. They do a lot of things. They talk about you to the press, to their friends, tell stories, and you know, it’s disappointing.
At twelve I looked like a girl of seventeen. My body was developed and shapely. I still wore the blue dress and the blouse the orphanage provided. They made me look like an overgrown lummox.
Consider the fellow. He never spends his time telling you about his previous night’s date. You get the idea he has eyes only for you and wouldn’t think of looking at another woman.
I’ve always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, ‘Hi,’ that the people ought to get their money’s worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.
There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.
When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.
Someone said to me, ‘If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?’ My answer was then and still is, ‘If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.’
Sometimes I’ve been to a party where no one spoke to me for a whole evening. The men, frightened by their wives or sweeties, would give me a wide berth. And the ladies would gang up in a corner to discuss my dangerous character.
I don’t know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood, important people can’t stand to be invited someplace that isn’t full of other important people. They don’t mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners.
Of course, it does depend on the people, but sometimes I’m invited places to kind of brighten up a dinner table like a musician who’ll play the piano after dinner, and I know you’re not really invited for yourself. You’re just an ornament.
I finally made up my mind I wanted to be an actress and I was not going to let my lack of confidence ruin my chances.
In Rockford I decided that I had seen enough of the world.
There is nothing positive about being fat. And there is nothing positive about loving yourself. We all need to conform to society’s expectations of who we are, because if we don’t, who will? Life is more enjoyable when you are thin and pretty. I was never fat a day in my life and I never will.
After all, all we demanded was a right to twinkle.
If a star or studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened – as if somebody was trying to demote them.
There was my name up in lights. I said, ‘God, somebody’s made a mistake.’ But there it was, in lights. And I sat there and said, ‘Remember, you’re not a star.’ Yet there it was up in lights.