Ava Gardner

“After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, "She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!"”

“I'm here to tell you, there ain't much forgiveness in that old-time religion. That particular savior was a mean son of a bitch. If you sinned, honey, he was going to get you, no doubt about...”

“And the news got worse. It appeared that there was this whole other person Jesus Christ whose birthday a lot of people tended to confuse with mine. I was personally outraged. It was a long t...”

“I wish to live to 150 years old, but the day I die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.”

“The marriages to Mickey and Artie were easy come, easy go. I called them my 'starter husbands!'”

“Mickey - the smallest husband I ever had and the biggest mistake I ever made - well, that year, it was.”

“I go on tremendous health kicks - exercise, yogurt, no booze. Of course, I smoke too much.”

“Mama, you know, poor baby, she'd had her family all finished: four daughters and a couple of sons, and suddenly, I arrived in her midlife on Christmas Eve 1922.”

“I fell down in Hyde Park with a friend who'd had a hip operation, and neither of us could get up again. People must have thought we were a couple of drunks rolling around and walked on by.”

“Nobody could pile on the applesauce like Mickey. He was the best liar in the world - well, Frank Sinatra can tell a good story, too, but I don't believe he was ever unfaithful to me.”

“It's a shame that it didn't work out with Mick. I was hopelessly in love with him.”

“I think the main reason my marriages failed is that I always loved too well but never wisely.”

“I do owe Mickey one thing: he taught me how much I enjoyed sex.”

“I'm not saying my own looks don't give the game away. Nothing I can do about that anymore. A nip and tuck ain't gonna do it.”

“It's fine being stared at as a pretty girl, but not as a freak. When I tried to make myself ugly, they said, 'Oh, she's lost her looks.'”

“Because I was promoted as a sort of a siren and played all those sexy broads, people made the mistake of thinking I was like that off the screen. They couldn't have been more wrong.”

“To be possessed when you are a child is just a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel safe. It makes you feel loved. But later if anyone tried to possess me - oh boy, I was out of there.”