Silver Screen Legends Quotes

There are lots of actresses I consider to be my icons, from Katharine Hepburn and Grace Kelly to Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep.

When I was a kid, I used to watch all those Sunday afternoon matinees featuring all the Hollywood greats.

Hollywood ... the most sensational merry-go-around ever built.

The people I tend to look to and reference are Hollywood icons; Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth.

If you look at any of the greats, from people like Paul Newman and Robert Redford to, you know, Brad Pitt - to get any of the kinds of roles like the ones that they've gotten, or just to be a part of any of the kinds of movies they've made, would be the end-all for me.

I think it's mainly when I need inspiration I look at the old pictures. I don't find it as much in the new stuff. I love Carole Lombard. I think she's wonderful. Gloria Grahame was really great. Garbo. Dietrich. People knew how to create an illusion. Now everything is very realistic and straightforward. Everyone's grunge.

I was always attracted to the type of cinema hero as an adolescent growing up in Ireland. Robert Mitchum springs to mind. Later on, it was Steve McQueen to a certain extent and Charles Bronson. They're these types of grizzled characters who had one foot on the side of law and order and the other foot in the bad guy's camp.

I used to stay up very late at night, much later than I probably should have for such a youngster, and I used to watch very old black-and-white movies with, you know, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but I remember watching them thinking 'I could do that'... Even though I wasn't inclined at all to actually become an actress. I mean, that wasn't something that was... in the stars for me, no pun intended.

While I was making my solo films, RKO was busily trying to get me and Fred Astaire back together. The studio wanted to capitalize on the success of 'Flying Down to Rio' and realized that the pairing of Rogers and Astaire had moneymaking potential.

All the good modern parts go to Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant.

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are larger than life. They just are. They sucked all the oxygen out of a room: they're icons; they loom large in our imaginations. But the truth of the matter is both women were diminutive.

In the days of Gary Cooper, James Stewart etc, film stars personified the better aspects of human nature.

The old movie stars like Bogart, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, they weren't this gorgeous, striking six-foot man who's rippled with muscles.

I like sunny stories. You know, my favorite girls in the '50s were Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day, and Esther Williams.