Glenda Jackson - biography

Biography

Glenda Jackson is best-known for the following films:

Glenda Jackson Quotes

“Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.”

“I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.”

“I was five months pregnant when I made that nude scene in Women In Love. I’d never had such a marvellous bosom.”

“When I have to cry, I think about my love life. When I have to laugh, I think about my love life.”

“Why put make-up on when you only have to take it off again?”

“You’d think it something one would grow out of. But you grow into it. The more you do, the more you realise how painfully easy it is to be lousy and how very difficult to be good.”

“I’ve always been ambitious to be very good at what I do.”

“I was the archetypal spotty teenager who suffered the tortures of the damned because I wasn’t like those girls in the magazines. I had lank, greasy hair and I was fat and spotty.”

“The bunch of critics we have now in London couldn’t write decent advertising copy let alone journalism. They’re blind and deaf.”

“It would be nice if education was free to everyone who wanted it, but that’s not the world we live in.”

“Ideally, one would like to work in England. But if no one in England is going to take their courage in both hands and dig into their pockets and finance films - then you’re going to have to work abroad.”

“Men can be a great deal of work for very little reward.”

“If all the system can offer its talent is the crap it does, then producers should pay through the eyes, ears, nose, mouth - any orifice you can think of.”

“My money goes to my agent, then to my accountant and from him to the tax man.”

“You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money.”

“I haven’t seen a woman take a moral stand in a film for twenty years.”

“If anyone thinks I look sexy stripped in The Music Lovers, they must think Minnie Mouse is sexy.”

“My mother polishes them to an inch of their lives until the metal shows. That sums up the Academy Awards - all glitter on the outside and base metal coming through. Nice presents for a day. But they don’t make you any better.”

“An actor can do Hamlet right through to King Lear, men of every age and every step of spiritual development. Where’s the equivalent for women? I don’t fancy hanging around to play Nurse in Romeo and Juliette. Life’s too short.”

“I have never believed you make your case stronger by bad-mouthing your opposition.”

“I look forward to growing old and wise and audacious.”

“I told them I wouldn’t sign a blank cheque.”

“I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better.”

“I used to empty ashtrays for cigarette butts, re-roll them and make myself a fag. I used to live on a pound of sausages and a cooking apple.”

“If I’m too strong for some people, that’s their problem.”

“One hell of an outlay for a very small return, with most of them.”

“You see women in America who’ve had face-lifts - faces as smooth as melons. It makes my stomach turn to think about voluntarily putting myself under a surgeon’s knife.”

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