- Most of us don't know about happiness until it's over.
- I've always believed that acting is instinct to start with; you either have it or you don't.
- Audiences always sound like they're glad to see me, and I'm damned glad to see them. If they want you, you want to do it.
- I know what's best for me; after all. I have been in the Claudette Colbert business longer than anybody.
- [after having been asked to write her autobiography] Books written by actresses are for the birds. Besides, what would I write? That somebody was looking for an Italian type to play the ingénue in a film and I might do?
- Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy--the mother.
- [to Bette Davis] You're the luckiest of us all. You started playing older women when you were young. So you never had to bridge the gap.
- [on Clark Gable] I was so happy to be within two feet of him.
- This I know for sure. Of all the marriages I've seen where the husband has love for his wife after 15 years, the wife has the ability to make him laugh. She is gay when he comes home. She doesn't bore him with her petty ills.
- Some women think if you don't expect too much you won't be let down. I always expect miracles. Sure, I'm let down. But they're near miracles.
- [on winning the Best Actress Oscar for It Happened One Night (1934)] I was surprised when I got the prize. I really had no idea I would get it. In fact, I was ready to leave for New York the night they called to tell me about it. Dressed in a mousy brown suit, I was escorted into the banquet hall full of diamonds and tail coats. It was especially embarrassing because I imagined they thought I was putting on an act, making an entrance.
- [in 1982] I try to live sensibly. I sleep well, eat well, and have only one drink a day. I have managed to stay at 108 pounds--which is what I weighed years ago. I eat three meals a day, but if I'm working in a play, I need four meals a day for additional energy.
- [during the 1960s] I think there was more sex in those old films than in all that thrashing around today. I'm tired of sex scenes.
- I always had the feeling on the screen, and I never lost it, that I'd never given my best performance. I never felt I'd had enough rehearsing. When you go on the stage after four weeks of rehearsal, you know what you're doing. And really, there's nothing like that wonderful feeling of facing your audience.
- True a woman has to be good looking to start with, but it is the way she frames her beauty that does the trick. Clothes and ornaments of decisive feminine quality - and not too much of them - plus a slight suggestion of the risque will always win the admiration of a man.
- The adornment of beauty was both an art and a science with Cleopatra and it was the beginning of all that has made her famous to this day.
- [on her scanty, glamorous costumes in Cleopatra (1934)] If the famous Queen of Egypt wore cotton stockings, white shirtwaists and blue serge skirts - with high boots - no man would have given her a second glance.
- [on the Motion Picture Production Code] They were so strict in the old days. Back then, everything had to be symbolic. As he could not show what they can now, DeMille had to figure out ways to make people imagine what was going on. It shows you don't have to be stark naked rolling around in bed to make your point.
- I'd been in kind of a rut playing nice, long-suffering heroines. I was bored with those roles, but because I happened to look like a lady, that's all they wanted me to play. Working with DeMille opened up a whole other field; they realized I could look sexy.
- [on Cleopatra (1934)] In one scene Cecil B. DeMille wanted Caesar to drop rose petals on my feet. I screamed with laughter when he told me that. I said, "He can touch my foot, he can even bite it, but if he drops rose petals on it, I'll just burst out laughing." He finally agreed - it was one of the few times I ever won an argument with him.
- [on the bath scene in The Sign of the Cross (1932)] It was really quite funny. But you didn't make any jokes with C.B. To him, it was important that everything be absolutely correct. He was very serious about giving the public what it wanted.
- [on Cecil B. DeMille] To us, a lot of his ideas were corny, but I don't think you can call him phony. He really believed in what he was doing. When we did the scene in The Sign of the Cross (1932) with the Christians being eaten by lions, he really suffered.
- [1979] Today, with everyone trying to be so sophisticated and tongue in cheek, something is taken away. DeMille's films were special: somehow when he put everything together, there was a special kind of glamour and sincerity. It's so different now.
- They removed my belly-button in The Sign of the Cross (1932). Did you ever see a tummy without a navel? It's very weird.
- [on the "rug" scene in Cleopatra (1934)] It was quite difficult to be rolled into a rug and breathe and come out looking pleased with yourself. We only had to do that scene once.
- [on the Klim used for the bath scene in The Sign of the Cross (1932)] That's "milk" spelled backward. I was in the pool all day. The Klim was so warm my bangs came uncurled. When the electricians turned off all the hot lights for an hour it congealed and the Klim turned to cream cheese.
- If you are not naturally lovely then try to create an illusion of loveliness. I have tried deliberately and earnestly to do that. Any actress must. When people say that I have succeeded I love it.
- When I was born, my father looked at me and said, "She looks as if she might have nice eyes sometimes, but what a terrible mouth!"
- When I grew a little older, my nose began to grow out of proportion. My mother used to say, "Claudette, don't you want to be pretty when you grow up?" And I would make a naughty face at her and say, "No, I don't."
- [on Greta Garbo] Garbo is not a beautiful woman. But she can enter a room with her long, slow stride and give an illusion of beauty and glamor. If I tried to do that I should be simply ridiculous.
- [on Four Frightened People (1934) The fifth frightened people was the audience.
- I always wore clothes by Travis Banton - he was a great designer. 'After that I was dressed by Irene and Adrian.
- [on Warren William] Warren raised wire-haired fox terriers. DeMille frightened him, but then, DeMille frightened almost all his actors. I could say no to him.
- [on Ernst Lubitsch] I was mad about him. First of all, he was an actor himself, and he was the only director I know of who wanted to entertain his actors. He made us do things no one else could make us do.
- [on It Happened One Night (1934)] When it was offered to me, Gable was already set for his part. That's all I needed to know. The minute I was asked I said yes.
- [on her acceptance speech at the Lincoln Center Film Society gala in her honor] Once you've said thank you, there's nothing more to say: the others are saying it. If I tried to talk I'd burst into tears.
- I never thought of movies, God knows, until the 1929 crash. When that came, the money seemed to dry up on Broadway.
- [In 1981, on the early deaths of her young co-stars in Tomorrow is Forever, Richard Long and Natalie Wood] Dick, poor Dick, and now our little Natalie. Both of them gone so young and here I am.
- I just don't dig the dirty sweatshirt approach to stardom. It came in with Marlon Brando, I suppose. I'm happy that it is somewhat on the decline. At least I hope it is. I just don't understand those people, going around in dirty clothes and saying dirty words at banquets. At least they could wash their faces and comb their hair. That's the very least they could do.
- [1960] It's not so easy to find pictures for me any more. But that hasn't worried me. I'm not the kind who can sit around and wait. I've got to keep busy. I did a lot of TV and then I went back to the stage and played Marriage-Go-Round for two years. That was real fun. People asked me if I had trouble going back to the theater. That's silly. If you know your work, you can do it in any medium.
- [1960] The nice thing about growing older in the acting business is that you don't have to worry about competing. You're not concerned that another actress is doing better than you. You come in and do your work, knowing that you bring a certain competence to it and receive a certain acceptance.
- [Texas Lady (1955) was] not very good.
- If a woman thinks beauty she will inspire that idea in the minds of others. Feel that you are beautiful, and the people with whom you come in contact will feel it also. It is very simple.
- [1934] My nose is too broad, and my cheekbones are too wide apart. My chin is too pointed for the rest of my face. Altogether I am really a very plain person, and I am lucky to have a good figure to offset my plainness.
- [to Cecil B. DeMille, after he said he disliked women with red polished nails] Mr. DeMille, Cleopatra wore red polish on her fingernails, and as I am playing the part of Cleopatra I shall do the same.
- [1983] My husband always wanted me to get copies of my films. I never did because when you are young, you never think you are going to be old.
- [1938] When I read a script, I search for dramatic values. Is there opportunity in this or that role? That is the only question. In a play giving equal importance to two feminine characters, one noble, the other notorious, I would elect to portray the harridan, for such women are remembered where the unsullied heroines are forgotten.
- [on people who want to know her secret to longevity] I tell them the truth - the number one thing is the genes you inherit. My mother died at 94. I hope I make 100.
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