Ava Gardner Quotes

All I ever got out of any of my marriages was the two years Artie Shaw financed on an analyst`s couch.

I have only one rule in acting -- trust the director and give him heart and soul

When I lose my temper, honey, you can`t find it any place.

I don`t understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.

I must have seen more sunrises than any other actress in the history of Hollywood.

I haven`t taken an overdose of sleeping pills and called my agent. I haven`t been in jail, and I don`t go running to the psychiatrist every two minutes. That`s something of an accomplishment these days.

Nobody ever called it an intellectual profession.

I couldn`t imagine a better place (Australia) for making a film on the end of the world.

Deep down, I`m pretty superficial.

After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, "She can`t talk! She can`t act! She`s sensational!"

Everybody kisses everybody else in this crummy business all the time. It`s the kissiest business in the world.

What`s the point? My face, shall we say, looks lived in.

I made it as a star dressed, and if it ain`t dressed, I don`t want it.

I wish to live until 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.

(in 1985, on why she came out of retirement to appear on a prime-time soap opera) "For the loot, honey, for the loot.

What I`d really like to say about stardom is that it gave me everything I never wanted.

Maybe I just didn`t have the temperament for stardom. I`ll never forget seeing Bette Davis at the Hilton in Madrid. I went up to her and said, "Miss Davis, I`m Ava Gardner and I`m a great fan of yours." And do you know, she behaved exactly as I wanted her to behave. "Of course you are, my dear," she said. "Of course you are." And she swept on. Now that`s a star.

Although no one believes me, I have always been a country girl and still have a country girl`s values.

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

I suffered, I really suffered, with all three of my husbands. And I tried damn hard with all three, starting each marriage certain that it was going to last until the end of my life. Yet none of them lasted more than a year or two.

I have only one rule in acting -- trust the director and give him heart and soul.

I have only one rule in acting - trust the director and give him heart and soul.

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.