Bette Davis - biography

“Acting should be bigger than life.  Scripts should be bigger than life.  It should all be bigger than life.”

“Good actors I’ve worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.”

“I don’t think of myself as a character actress - that’s become a phrase which means you’ve had it.”

“I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.”

“I never did pal around with actresses.  Their talk usually bored me to tears.”

“I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.”

“I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.”

“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.”

“People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.”

“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.”

“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. ”

“Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my 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.”

“Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade.  With it, it becomes creation.”

“At 50, I thought proudly: here we are, half a 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.”

“From the age of six, I have known that I was sexy.  And let me tell you it has been hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.”

“Getting old is not for sissies.”

“Well, the rear of it [the Oscar] looked like my first husband Ham Nelson’s bare behind.  And Ham’s middle name was Oscar.  But whether or not I named it officially isn’t going to make a bit of difference in my life.”

“In this business, until you’re known as a monster you’re not a star.”

“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 will never be below the title.”

“Today everyone is a star - they’re all billed as ‘starring’ or ‘also starring’.  In my day, we earned that recognition.”

“I’d marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he’d be dead within a year.”

“It is my last wish to be buried sitting up.”

“The key to life is accepting challenges.  Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.”

“With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn’t consider dying.”

“There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.”

“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. ”

“I don’t take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.”

“The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can’t get work in the movies.”

“We movie stars all end up by ourselves.  Who knows?  Maybe we want to.”

“I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.”

“I believe God helps those who help themselves.”

“A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.”

“There are new words now that excuse everybody.  Give me the good old days of heroes and villains.  the people you can bravo or hiss.  There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch. ”

“Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.”

“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.”

“Life is a jest; and all things show it.  I thought so once; but now I know it.”

“Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage.  I’m afraid it did.”

“Love is not enough.  It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure.  It is much too pliable, too yielding.”

“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life.  The money is the gravy.  As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it.  But alone, it is not a diet designed to keep body and soul together. ”

“[Sex is] God’s biggest joke on human beings.”

“An affair now and then is good for a marriage.  It adds spice, stops it from getting boring...  I ought to know.”

“If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.”

“I’ve lost my faith in science.”

“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. ”

“She’s the original good time that was had by all.”

“The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

“I’ve always liked men better than women.”

“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.”

“Strong women only marry weak men.”

“When a man gives his opinion he’s a man.  When a woman gives her opinion she’s a bitch.”

“Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.”

“I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.”

“I work to stay alive.”

“It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward.  It is only work that truly satisfies. ”

“This became a credo of mine...attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.”

“This has always been a motto of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.”

“Everybody has a heart.  Except some people.”

“From the moment I was six I felt sexy.  And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.”

“Gay Liberation?  I ain’t against it, it’s just that there’s nothing in it for me.”

“I am just too much.”

“I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.”

“I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.”

“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. ”

“I’d luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.”

“I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.”

“In this rat-race everybody’s guilty till proved innocent!”

“My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist.  Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose. ”

“Oh, don’t let’s ask for the moon.  We’ve already got the stars.”

“That’s me: an old kazoo with some sparklers.”

“To look back is to relax one’s vigil.”

Bette Davis has appeared in the following films:
The Bad Sister (1931)
Seed (1931)
Waterloo Bridge (1931)
Way Back Home (1931)
The Menace (1932)
Hell’s House (1932)
The Man Who Played God (1932)
So Big! (1932)
The Rich Are Always with Us (1932)
The Dark Horse (1932)
The Cabin in the Cotton (1932)
Three on a Match (1932)
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)
Just Around the Corner (1933)
Parachute Jumper (1933)
The Working Man (1933)
Ex-Lady (1933)
Bureau of Missing Persons (1933)
The Big Shakedown (1934)
Fashions of 1934 (1934)
Jimmy the Gent (1934)
Fog Over Frisco (1934)
Of Human Bondage (1934)
Housewife (1934)
Bordertown (1935)
The Girl from 10th Avenue (1935)
Front Page Woman (1935)
Special Agent (1935)
Dangerous (1935)
The Petrified Forest (1936)
The Golden Arrow (1936)
Satan Met a Lady (1936)
Marked Woman (1937)
Kid Galahad (1937)
That Certain Woman (1937)
It’s Love I’m After (1937)
Jezebel (1938)
The Sisters (1938)
Dark Victory (1939)
Juarez (1939)
The Old Maid (1939)
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
If I Forget You (1940)
All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
The Letter (1940)
The Great Lie (1941)
Shining Victory (1941)
The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941)
The Little Foxes (1941)
The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
In This Our Life (1942)
Now, Voyager (1942)
Watch on the Rhine (1943)
Old Acquaintance (1943)
Mr. Skeffington (1944)
The Corn Is Green (1945)
A Stolen Life (1946)
Deception (1946)
Winter Meeting (1948)
June Bride (1948)
Beyond the Forest (1949)
All About Eve (1950)
Payment on Demand (1951)
Another Man’s Poison (1951)
Phone Call from a Stranger (1952)
The Star (1952)
The Virgin Queen (1955)
The Catered Affair (1956)
Storm Center (1956)
John Paul Jones (1959)
The Scapegoat (1959)
Pocketful of Miracles (1961)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
La Noia (1963)
Dead Ringer (1964)
Where Love Has Gone (1964)
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)
The Nanny (1965)
The Love Goddesses (1965)
Think Twentieth (1967)
The Anniversary (1968)
Connecting Rooms (1970)
Bunny O’Hare (1971)
Madame Sin (1972)
Lo Scopone scientifico (1972)
Burnt Offerings (1976)
Return from Witch Mountain (1978)
Death on the Nile (1978)
The Children of Sanchez (1978)
The Watcher in the Woods (1980)
The Whales of August (1987)
South of Reno (1988)
Wicked Stepmother (1989)