TALLULAH BANKHEAD QUOTES

American actress (1902-1968)

Tallulah Bankhead quote

I'm intoxicated by applause. It's my nectar.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography


If you want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, be an audience.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes

Tags: theatre


Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: vice


Once I achieved stardom, the whole apparatus of the theater palled on me.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: fame


I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: education


It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work -- the night watchman.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: night


I sniffed stardom. But my nose betrayed me.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: fame


I'm as pure as the driven slush.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Saturday Evening Post, Apr. 12, 1947

Tags: purity


In view of my scorn for the theater, its practices and delinquencies, why have I continued to act in it for thirty years? I have no alternate profession. Lobster-trapping? Placer-mining? Smuggling? I haven't the muscles, the equipment or the nerve.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: theater


The humiliation of being in a poor play, of playing a shabby role, of appearing before disgruntled audiences, if any, of being curdled by hostile reviews, can outrage all human dignity. Being caught in a long-run success is almost as bad. The fearful monotony, the boredom of saying the same words every night, at the same minute, has unhinged the mind of more than one actress.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: boredom


Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have the time.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

attributed, The Pleasures of Diaries: Four Centuries of Private Writing


They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

attributed, IMDb


I'm supposed to be mercurial! Honey-haired, cello-voiced, mercurial Tellulah, that's me!

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography


I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: fame


There's less in this than meets the eye.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography


My doom was sealed when I saw a girl turn cartwheels at a circus in Birmingham.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography


The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: regret


Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: individuality


Apostates have hinted that I'm the ill-begotten daughter of Medusa and the Marquis de Sade. As against these slanders there are the hymns of my champions, equally inaccurate, that I'm a fusion of Annie Laurie, Bopeep, Florence Nightingale and whichever waif Lillian Gish played in The Orphans of the Storm. Somewhere in between these contrary verdicts lies the truth.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

Tallulah: My Autobiography

Tags: lies


All my life, I've been terrible at remembering people's names. I once introduced a friend of mine as Martini. Her name was actually Olive.

TALLULAH BANKHEAD

attributed, IMDb

Tags: life