Welcome to our collection of quotes by Bette Davis. We hope you enjoy pondering them and please share widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress with a career spanning more than 50 years and 100 acting credits. She was noted for playing unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and was famous for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical films, suspense horror, and occasional comedies, although her greater successes were in romantic dramas. A recipient of two Academy Awards, she was the first thespian to accrue ten nominations.
After appearing on Broadway in New York, the 22-year-old Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930. After some unsuccessful films, she had her critical breakthrough playing a vulgar waitress in Of Human Bondage (1934) although, contentiously, she was not among the three nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actress that year. The next year, her performance as a down-and-out actress in Dangerous (1935) did land Davis her first Best Actress nomination, and she won the award. Davis was known for her forceful and intense style of acting.
In 1937, she tried to free herself from her contract with Warner Brothers Studio; although she lost the legal case, it marked the start of more than a decade as one of the most celebrated leading ladies of U.S. cinema. The same year, she starred in Marked Woman, a film regarded as one of the most important in her early career. Davis's portrayal of a strong-willed 1850s southern belle in Jezebel (1938) won her a second Academy Award for Best Actress, and was the first of five consecutive years in which she received a Best Actress nomination; the others were for Dark Victory (1939), The Letter (1940), The Little Foxes (1941) and Now, Voyager (1942).
Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist in her craft. She could be combative and confrontational with studio executives and film directors, as well as with her co-stars, expecting the same high standard of performance and commitment from them as she expected from herself. Her forthright manner, idiosyncratic speech, and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona that has been often imitated.
She played a Broadway star in All About Eve (1950), which earned her another Oscar nomination and won her the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. Her last Oscar nomination was for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), which also starred her famous rival Joan Crawford. In the latter stage of her career, her most successful films were Death on the Nile (1978) and The Whales of August (1987). Her career went through several periods of eclipse, but despite a long period of ill health she continued acting in film and on television until shortly before her death from breast cancer in 1989.
She admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. She was married four times, divorcing three and widowed once, when her second husband died unexpectedly. She raised her children largely as a single parent. Her daughter, B. D. Hyman, wrote a controversial memoir about her childhood, 1985's My Mother's Keeper.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, a club venue for food, dancing and entertainment for servicemen during World War II, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She was also the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. In 1999, Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of the classical Hollywood cinema era.
If you have never been hated by your child you have never been a parent.
It's a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.
An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring I ought to know.
I'd marry again if I found a man who had $15 million and would sign over half of it to me before the marriage and guarantee he'd be dead in a year.
I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. It is endless.
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone--but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone's concern and like vampires they suck our life's blood.
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone -- but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child. Discipline is guidance. If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child.
We're all busy little bees, full of stings, making honey day and night, aren't we honey?
This became a credo of mine...attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
May each of my grandsons know, at an early age, what his life's ambition is -- and may he be successful in his pursuit of that goal.
I firmly believe, however, that if your children have never hated you, you have failed as a parent.
Almost as many inhumanities are committed in the name of love as in the name of religion.
What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.
If men found out how to give birth to children they'll never propose again.
You mustn't miss the moment. There's only one first sailing into Rio harbor.
If Hollywood didn't work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world.
I never said anything that was unprintable. Never said anything just for the sake of being startling.
It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for any lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.
There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.
Actually, I think business women are better women at home, if you want to know the truth because you do understand what goes into a day's work out in the world, a very nerve-racking affair.
Evil people you never forget them. And that's the aim of any actress-never to be forgotten.
People stood on their chairs, cheering and waving. And it was all for me! Waves of love flooded the stage and washed over me. I started to cry. The sweetness of such a moment is impossible to describe. One is both lover and beloved. ... I'd found the one true, enduring romance of my life.
I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director.
You know what I'm going to have on my gravestone? 'She did it the hard way.'
It's a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.
I have always felt proud of my Oscars and my numerous
nominations. This pride is due to the fact it was the
result of voters from the members of my own
profession. This, of course, is a great compliment for one's
work. I hope each winner of an Oscar is as thrilled as
I was when I received mine.
Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night! -- As Margo Channing in All About Eve.
Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother's old farmhouse -- all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic.
It's a very independent male creature that lives alone, and a lot of independent females who live alone. It's all very sad but it's much easier for both sexes to do it this way nowadays.
Don't you hate people who drink white wine? I mean, my dear, every alcoholic in town is getting falling-down drunk on white wine. They think they aren't drunks because they only drink wine. Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.
Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.
At 50, I thought proudly: Here we are, half century! Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black Afro wig, wore black clothes and hung a black wreath on my door.
As a female I think it's a terrible hindrance in business. I think it's a terrible hindrance for any female to have a lot of intelligence in private life, but I think in business sometimes it's even worse because there's deep resentment.
I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.
I may not have been wearing a mink coat, but I was traveling with a dog. That should have made you think I was an actress!
I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.
Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.
A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable... I suppose I'm larger than life.
Among the reasons marriages fail, sex ranks no higher than fourth, behind money, having only one bathroom, and an inability to communicate, reasons one, two and three.
Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.
I didn't forget your breakfast. I didn't bring your breakfast. Because you didn't eat your din-din.
There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.
Mother of three; divorcee; American. Twenty years experience as an actress in motion pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumour would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway). References upon request.
I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.
The out-of-work actor wears out more than shoe leather. The very sensibilities that make him an artist are shattered by the disregard he is shown as a human being.
When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.
I think men have got to change an awful lot. They still prefer the little woman.
I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.
Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child.He needs guidance.If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
It's true we don't know what we've got until its gone, but we don't know what we've been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.
If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.
Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone-but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
When a man gives his opinion he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion she's a bitch.
Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times -- almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful. I've seen some very talented actors go into analysis and really lose it.
People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.
My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn't do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.
Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes.
I was never very interested in boys -- and there were plenty of them -- vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.
I don't think of myself as a character actress -- that's become a phrase which means you've had it.