Quotes

You could put all the talent I had into your left eye and still not suffer from impaired vision.

I will have one of the cleanest obits of any actress. I never did cheesecake like Ann Sheridan or Betty Grable. I just used my hair.

I wasn't a sex symbol, I was a sex zombie.

[1970, reflecting on her career] I've reached a point in my life where it's the little things that matter. I'm no longer interested in doing what's expected of me. I was always a rebel and probably could have got much farther had I changed my attitude. But when you think about it, I got pretty far without changing attitudes. I'm happier with that.

Hollywood gives a young girl the aura of one giant, self-contained orgy farm, its inhabitants dedicated to crawling into every pair of pants they can find.

[on Alan Ladd] Alan Ladd was a marvelous person in his simplicity. In so many ways we were kindred spirits. We both were professionally conceived through Hollywood's search for box office and the types to insure the box office. And we were both little people. Alan wasn't as short as most people believe. It was true that in certain films Alan would climb a small platform or the girl worked in a slit trench. We had no such problems together.

[on Paulette Goddard] It was her honesty I liked.

[on Marlon Brando] Our romance was short but sweet. He was on the dawn of a brilliant film career, and I was in the twilight of one. Of course, my career could never compare with his.

[on her screen test for I Wanted Wings (1941)] My hair kept falling over one eye and I kept brushing it back. I thought I had ruined my chances for the role. But Hornblow [producer Arthur Hornblow] was jubilant about that eye-hiding trick. An experienced showman, he knew that the hairstyle was something people would talk about. He had a big picture and lots of talk would bring customers to see it.

[on performing with Fredric March in I Married a Witch (1942)] He treated me like dirt under his talented feet. Of all actors to end up under the covers with. That happened in one scene and Mr. March is lucky he didn't get my knee in his groin.

There's no doubt I was a bit of a misfit in the Hollywood of the forties. The race for glamor left me far behind. I didn't really want to keep up. I wanted my stardom without the usual trimmings. Because of this, I was branded a rebel at the very least. But I don't regret that for a minute. My appetite was my own and I simply wouldn't have it any other way.

I think I've developed into an actress because I've worked darn hard at it and I've learned a great deal from a lot of gifted people. And if I have nothing else to show for my life, apart from a scrapbook full of cuttings, I have the knowledge that my early days in Hollywood weren't in vain.

If I had stayed in Hollywood I would have ended up like Alan Ladd and Gail Russell--dead and buried by now. That rat race killed them and I knew it would kill me, so I had to get out. I was never psychologically meant to be a picture star. I never took it seriously. I couldn't "live" being a"'movie star" and I couldn't "camp" it, and I hated being something I wasn't.

[on her stage name] Arthur Hornblow Jr., who was the producer of my first picture, said, "I sat up all one night till about six o'clock this morning." And he said, "Suddenly it dawned on me. 'Veronica' expresses the classic features, and the 'Lake' is the coolness one feels when they look into your eyes." And that's how I got the name.

[on her famous hairstyle] Apparently it was something that was rather feminine, and I think most men like women to have long hair.

My mother and myself never got along too well and that was from early childhood. In Hollywood they had absolutely no way of knowing that this was true. My mother's real first name - it happens to be Veronica. And of all the names they picked it had to be Veronica. And I just sat down and cried.

Somehow or other maybe all of us weren't the most extremely talented people, but I think there was - to some degree - an intangible . . . that we had a staying power that enticed people, enchanted them. Clark Gable with his big ears, Dorothy Lamour with her sarong, Veronica Lake with her hair over one eye. And Gary Cooper with his "Yup!". Henry Fonda . . . Who could find a Spencer Tracy or a Katharine [Katharine Hepburn] or a Paulette [Paulette Goddard]?

[1971] I was never an actress when I was here. I was a freak. But now I'm a bloody damn good actress. I know it sounds immodest, but it's true.

[on Hollywood] I walked out of this town when I could have stayed and worked. And I have no regrets. If I'd stayed, I'd be dead now.