Quotes

[on Spartacus (1960)] Making Spartacus was enough acting to last anybody a lifetime. You know, after we had been filming a year Kirk Douglas sent me a magnum of champagne with a little note saying, "I hope our second year will be as happy as our first.".

[on working with William Wyler in The Big Country (1958)] The atmosphere [on set] felt very dodgy - the sort of prevailing tension that invites paranoia, causes you to wonder, "What have I done?"... I guess Willy was in a position to know what it took to achieve great performances, but he also seemed bent on making things difficult... and there was all that constant rewriting. We'd have our lines learned, then receive a rewrite, stay up all night learning the new version, then receive yet another rewrite the following morning. It made the acting damned near impossible. In Willy's favor, he was very agreeable in allowing me to think, and think, and think, and then think some more before I made my reply to [Gregory Peck's] offer. I felt a prompt answer would not serve the moment, and Willy proved most open and agreeable on that count. He could make you worry - order take after take without ever telling you what you were doing to provoke the retakes - he could also cause you to feel a sense of collaboration.

[on Spartacus (1960)] I remember a long, long day of filming and it took forever to get Kirk Douglas up on his cross. We played a terrible joke on him when, as he was safely installed, the assistant director called lunch and left him up there. He could have had the lot of us fired but he was very good about it. You have to have a sense of humor in this industry.

[on the studio system] I had to do four pictures for [Howard Hughes], and then I was free. I never signed a contract with a studio after.

My career has had a lot of ups and downs, but basically it has been wonderful.

If I hadn't gone to dancing school, I would have married and had children like my mum and had a normal life.

Every actress has to face the facts there are younger, more beautiful girls right behind you. Once you've gone beyond the vanity of the business, you'll take on the tough roles.

[on her first Academy Award Nomination in 1949] I didn't even know what an Oscar was at the time.

[on being offered the role of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (1989), having played Estella over 40 years previously in Great Expectations (1946)] At first, I thought they were crazy for sending me the script. I imagined different people doing Miss Havisham, always thinking of Martita Hunt. But after my initial reaction about the mini-series script, I started to really read it and then read the book again, and I suddenly could see that I could do it my way... Having worked with Martita Hunt and watched her when she started to become Miss Havisham, I thought she was scary in her attitude. She was larger than life and dominated me as a person working with her. She was wonderful to me, but when she started to become Miss Havisham she was a very imposing figure