Quotes from Judy Holliday

I suppose that if I could have quit, I would have, because in those days I never wanted to be an actress, the acting was something to do while I waited for a chance to study writing and directing. But I guess I was just meant to be an actress. Because, here I am.

If you can handle a nightclub audience successfully, you can handle anything.

Now with all this movie business, everybody's coming around wanting to know everything that's happened since I was four. It's like going to an analyst.

We were wavering around like a ship without a sail.

I think Billie is the kind of girl who would let her hips swing loose.

I get very nervous whenever I think about it. I've never done a serious play, and I have such awe of the woman - she's really my only idol. It's going to be a big stretch - certain people come out on stage and your face muscles automatically tense and you get ready to smile.

Acting is a very limited form of expression and those who take it seriously are very limited people. I take it seriously.

It's tough when take 1 is technically okay and take 2 has better acting. Out here (Hollywood) they print the first one. That's the one where we all hit the mark on the floor and who cares about the acting.

The only actress they didn't test was Garbo. Must have been her accent.

Lovers have a right to betray you... friends don't.

It meant as much to me as winning the Oscar.

I want a part where I can use my own hair, my own voice, and maybe even be literate.

I could talk about him all day. He's one of the most wonderful things that ever happened to me.

I hated the whole idea of being an actress. I used to throw up before every performance and cry afterward.

I've always loved words. I ate up all the books I could get my hands on, and when I couldn't get books, I read candy wrappers and labels on cereal and toothpaste boxes.

He didn't maintain my illusion of myself, he gave me an illusion of myself. Before I met him, I never thought of myself as an actress. Boy, he sidetracked me in a great way!

When they thought of me, they always remembered the vacuous Billie Dawn. It was as simple as that.

Lovers have a right to betray you... friends don't.

I thought I was learning about show business. The more painful it was, the more important I thought the experience must be. Hating it, I convinced myself it must be invaluable.

I get very nervous whenever I think about it. I've never done a serious play, and I have such awe of the woman - she's really my only idol. It's going to be a big stretch - certain people come out on stage and your face muscles automatically tense and you get ready to smile.

I am not a member of any organization listed by the Attorney General as subversive. In any instance where I lent my name in the past, it was certainly without knowledge that such an organization was subversive. I have always been essentially and foremost an American.

Nobody can give a good performance unless the authors and composers have written a good part, a fact which is often overlooked.

I am not an 'instant' actor... to really do anything, I've got to try it five or six or a dozen times.

I'm trying to eliminate every vestige of my own personality, style, approach and get into somebody else's skin. Sometimes I feel I've accomplished it. But when I don't, I'm nobody at all, having left myself at home.