- I do not ever want to be a huge star. Do you think I want a success? I refused Bonnie and Clyde (1967) because I was nursing at the time but also because deep down I knew that it was going to be a huge success. The same was true of "Bob and Carol and Fred and Sue" or whatever it was called [Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)]. It reeked of success.
- [about Elvis Presley] He walked into a room and everything stopped. Elvis was just so physically beautiful that even if he didn't have any talent . . . just his face, just his presence. And he was funny, charming, and complicated, but he didn't wear it on his sleeve. You didn't see that he was complicated. You saw great needs.
- It seems the brighter you are, the deeper the hole you get into.
- [on her reputation as a "wild child"] As a teenager, I was a wreck. I drank so much I can't remember anything.
- [on Sue Lyon] I don't think of her as an actress or otherwise. She just doesn't occupy that much of my mind. I don't know her.
- [asked about a 1983 Tuesday Weld film festival] I was astonished. That's an honor usually reserved for someone like [Greta Garbo] or [Humphrey Bogart].
- I may be self-destructive, but I like taking chances with movies. I like challenges, and I also like the particular position I've been in all these years, with people wanting to save me from the awful films I've been in . . . I think the Tuesday Weld cult is a very nice thing.
- [in a 1972 interview] I don't like interviews because your brain can be picked. That's not nice anywhere--even in a living room.
- [about Pretty Poison (1968)] Don't talk to me about it. I couldn't bear Noel Black even speaking to me. When he said "Good morning" it destroyed my day.
- [about her mother] I hated Mama. I didn't feel really free until she died. Otherwise her death really didn't affect me much. Mama is already back here wandering around doing something. I hope as a puppy dog.
- When I was nine I had a breakdown, which disappointed Mama a great deal. But I made a comeback when I was ten. I was in and out of several schools, but I never really went. There were no rules then in New York protecting working children. I was doing television shows as well as modeling, and instead of going to school, I used to do what they called correspondence, which meant that if I was working, I'd just write in and say I had jobs. Even when I didn't have jobs, I'd get up in the morning and say, "Goodbye, Mama, I'm going to school" and then I'd head for the Village and get drunk. I started drinking heavily when I was about ten years old.
- I made my first suicide attempt when I was 12. I had fallen in love with a homosexual and when it didn't work out, I felt hurt . . . A bottle of aspirin, a bottle of sleeping pills, and a bottle of gin. I was sure that would do the trick, but Mama came in and found me. I was in a coma for a long time and I lost my hearing, my vision and several other things. When I recovered, I decided that I should try to get some help, but Mama didn't think I needed analysis.
- Mama tried to turn my brother and sister into models, too, but they preferred swimming. But me, I was the backward child, and I took to modeling immediately. Anything to escape.
- I like everything open. Everything. I don't like shut doors. I like to see. In the kitchen, I like to see all the spices, all the food . . . I wasn't really aware of it until people complained. It was completely unconscious. I would hear, "Could you please shut that door! We're gonna lose all the ice."
- [on ex-husband Dudley Moore] He's a major asshole.
- I know I'm not going to spend the rest of my life acting, there's too much else in the world. I could never be that confined. I think about giving up completely, and, not having any money, living on the beach. If you spend your whole life trying to make other people happy, you wind up with nothing. I've got to make myself happy first.
- [on dating] It's never satisfactory. Either the man is able to keep you happy sexually, and he has no intellectual quality; or he's very intellectual and not good at carrying on a satisfactory sexual relationship.
- [when asked how she'd rate herself as a mother] Not too good. Because I have a career and I'm not able to be with my children all the time. I didn't go to school myself. I never feel that I have enough to teach them or that I can help them with their schoolwork. My history is in personal experience, it's not academic. I have always felt torn about having to leave the children, which I've always had to do, and most of the time without their having a father around.
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