Ava Gardner Trashes Hollywood: Her 10 Best Quotes

Ava Gardner on Hollywood

“I thought I was making fifty dollars a week [at MGM], but it turned out to be $35 because twelve weeks of the year you were on layoff. It was white slavery, and it lasted for seventeen years.”

 

On Artie Shaw

“We hadn’t been married five minutes when he decided I should go to an analyst. Artie was a pseudo-intellectual. He had a great oral diarrhea. I was constantly being put down. I was madly in love with him, but I wasn’t treated as an equal, as a wife; I was treated as sort of his little pet.”

  

 

On Fighting Off Men

“I dealt with men who had tempers, and who could get violent—Lord knows how I had to defend myself against Howard Hughes and Frank Sinatra, and from Artie Shaw’s verbal abuse. But George [C. Scott] was a different category of animal when he got drunk. He’d break into my hotel room, which he did in Italy, London and at the Beverly Hills Hotel, attack me to where I was frightened for my life, and scream, ‘Why won’t you marry me?’ Well, I would never marry a man who couldn’t control his liquor. Me, I’m a happy drunk. I laugh, I dance. I certainly don’t break bottles and threaten to kill.”

  

 

On Frank Sinatra

“The poor guy was literally without a job. He said all he could do was play saloons and crappy night clubs. His ego and self-esteem was at its lowest ever. And mine was practically at its peak. So it was hell for him. He was such a proud man -- to have a woman pay all his bills was a bitch.”

  

 

On Acting

“I was lazy. I would have been a hell of a lot better actress had I taken it more seriously. I never had the proper respect for acting. Quite often, I learned my lines on the way to the studio.”

On Howard Hughes

“I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t know about his reputation or his great wealth or his thing about airplanes and jetting around the world.  I just knew that as soon as I got divorced from Mickey, Howard entered my life and I couldn’t get rid of him for the next fifteen years, no matter who I was with or who I married.”

  

 

On 'The Killers'

“Oh, what the hell did I know? I went to the set the first day in full makeup and the director told me to take it off. So I did the film without makeup. I had nothing to do with anything I did. I never understood why I was so famous.”

  

 

On Marlon Brando

“We went back to his hotel and had some drinks. I wasn’t wearing a bra and he reached over and grabbed my breasts and said, ‘Are those real?’ I said, ‘I believe they are.’”

  

 

On Mickey Rooney

“He came to visit me at the hospital and I heard the Jesus Christ routine. He’s a reborn Christian. He kept on about being made in the image of God. What a load of crap!”

  

 

On Drinking

“Some of the things that I regret most in my life happened when I was drinking. I’m just not good with alcohol. And I don’t give a damn what time of the day it is, I just drink too much.”