Quotes

Oh God, don't envy me, I have my own pains.

The audience is the barometer of the truth.

I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy, and driven.

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl (1983), he said, "I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can't. It's the best film I've seen since Citizen Kane (1941)".

One thing's for sure: now when I look at Funny Girl (1968), I think I was gorgeous. I was too beautiful to play Fanny Brice.

I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me.

[on connecting] What is exciting is not for one person to be stronger than the other . . . but for two people to have met their match and yet are equally as stubborn, as obstinate, as passionate, as crazy as the other.

My niece saw Funny Girl (1968) and said, "How come you're singing so many songs from Glee (2009)?".

[on the lack of Academy recognition of Yentl (1983)] In Hollywood a woman can be an actress, a singer, a dancer. But don't let her be too much more.

When I sing, people shut up.

[on Zach Galifianakis] In life I'm not a prude. In film I'm still a prude. Like when I saw that movie The Hangover (2009) with the guy Javalopolis? He was naked in the elevator, and I heard later it was not his real thing. But everybody thinks it's his real thing.

[on playing the mother of a young man in The Guilt Trip (2012)] The fact that I had a son made a big difference. I could relate this to my son and the times we went through, those rebellious periods, how you're walking on eggshells, how you don't want to say the wrong thing but you're always saying the wrong thing.

[on Dustin Hoffman] We were in the same acting school when I was 16, 17 years old. I used to babysit to get free acting lessons, and he was the janitor.

[on having to establish eating a 50-ounce steak in The Guilt Trip (2012)] That's where the filmmaker in me came out. The actress didn't want to do that scene. I said, "Can I come up with something other than eating?" But I thought it would serve the film so I said, "OK, I'll do it". But it was hard. I don't eat steak. One bite for me is enough. So they had to devise a way to make things look like steak. I still had to eat it for three days.

I just became a singer, because I could never get work as an actress.

My friend Quincy Jones says we won our first Grammys together in 1963. I have no recollection. I don't even remember the room. When he showed me the picture, I remembered what I wore. But it's like awards don't mean anything.

[on Marlon Brando] The finest actor who ever lived. He was my idol when I was 13. He's done enough work to last two lifetimes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this with me?

If I hear a record once, I usually never listen to it again. I rarely listen to music - unless it's Billie Holiday.

My mother never really thought I could become anything.

[on Judy Garland] People were looking for some sort of rivalry between us. And when they couldn't find anything, they made it up. I found Judy to be completely generous.

[Judy Garland warning about Hollywood] And I remember her saying something I never quite understood: "Don't let them do to you what they did to me." I should have asked her what she meant, but I didn't want to appear too nosy.