Quotes

One day during shooting [What's New Pussycat (1965)], I just climbed up the ropes to the catwalk and started walking the beams. Very loudly and clearly I called down to everyone on the set, 'I'm going to jump.' A French technician grabbed me, and there I was, hanging by one arm.

[After transfer to the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York]: It was horrendous. You're crazy because they say you're crazy. It was especially horrible because I couldn't figure out how to do what they wanted me to so I could get out.

He & She (1967) was worth it after what we'd been through. By working together we learned to live with each other again.

It took me a long time to find myself and I'm still looking around corners to see if I'm there. I used to wonder, why does Dick love me? After the baby [Ross Benjamin] was born, I could turn around and see it in myself.

Before I had the baby [Ross Benjamin] I felt lonely going to work. Now I have deeper, more generous feelings. I feel whole, like a human being.

[on valuing her identity more than box-office success]. "I always kept a close . . . touch for what I really like. It's very easy to lose it, because sometimes it's ignored, who you are, so you begin to play other people's games. I didn't ever do that. Too big a loss if I had done that. To lose yourself-you don't want that. That's too scary".

[About her psychological crisis while shooting "What's New Pussycat?" in Paris"]. "I was away from Dick, it was a very congenial group of people-to put it lightly!-and it's just what happened. A bit of a breakdown! I guess there was part of me that wondered, 'What's that like, if you go that far?' And then I knew."

I do [a role] for the experience of doing it. If it goes well or it doesn't go well, it still has accomplished what I needed for that time. I haven't ever had the thing where I thought, 'I've got to get something out there or nobody will want me.' Somebody's going to want you. You have an obligation to just live life.

You're never retired if you're an actress. You keep doing things. One of the reasons I went into acting was because I thought those characters by Chekhov, Shaw and Shakespeare I studied when I went to Northwestern [University] were so fascinating. I thought if I played those characters, I would find something out about myself. That's the fun of it. It never really ends, and you can always find something to do.

[on playing a dramatic role] It's fun to get the opportunity to play a different kind of character. I looked on this as a real adventure. I just jumped in, which is what I was like when I was a little girl. I remember I went to a swimming pool with my mother. I didn't know how to swim. I said, 'Mother, I want to jump in,' and she said, 'Go ahead, honey.' So I jumped in. I've always had this sense of, 'I want to try that.'

[on starring in her first film, Where the Boys Are (1960)] I felt like a fish out of water. Fortunately, in my first movie, there was Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux and Connie Francis. We all were Catholic so we had that feeling there was a kindred thing there. I kept up their friendships and talk to Dolores and see Connie from time to time. It worked out and I had good friends in the movie.

[on The Stepford Wives (1975)] It's the first of the women's-lib kind of movies. It isn't pounding you on the head. It's doing it through horror and comedy, and that's a good genre.