Marilyn Monroe was quite aware of the powerful impact she had on people just from her physical presence, but she longed to be recognized as a serious and talented actress, working hard at her vocation.
Marilyn Monroe Quotes on Acting and Hollywood
• When you have only a single dream it is more than likely to come true -- because you keep working toward it without getting mixed up.
• If I'd observed all the rules, I'd never have got anywhere.
• It's all make believe, isn't it?
• I love to do the things the censors won't pass.
• It's better for the whole world to know you, even as a sex star, than never to be known at all.
• I am trying to prove to myself that I am a person. Then may be I'll convince myself that I'm an actress.
• A career is wonderful thing, but you can't snuggle up to it on a cold night.
• A career is born in public -- talent in privacy.
• Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.
• Of the nude pictures: Sure I posed. I needed the money.
• An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.
• An actor is not a machine, no matter how much they want to say you are. Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer.
• In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo. You're judged by how you look, not by what you are. Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty.
• I don't want to make money. I just want to be wonderful.
• My work is the only ground I've ever had to stand on. I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation -- but I'm working on the foundation.
• I want to be an artist, not an erotic freak. I don't want to be sold to the public as a celluloid aphrodisical.
• Acting isn't something you do. Instead of doing it, it occurs. If you're going to start with logic, you might as well give up. You can have conscious preparation, but you have unconscious results.
• I've always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, "Hi," that the people ought to get their money's worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.
• This industry should behave like a mother whose child has just run out in front of a car. But instead of clasping the child to them, they start punishing the child. Like you don't dare get a cold. How dare you get a cold! I mean, the executives can get colds and stay home forever and phone it in, but how dare you, the actor, get a cold or a virus. You know, no one feels worse than the one who's sick. I sometimes wish, gee, I wish they had to act a comedy with a temperature and a virus infection.
• I finally made up my mind I wanted to be an actress and I was not going to let my lack of confidence ruin my chances.
• My illusions didn't have anything to do with being a fine actress. I knew how third rate I was. I could actually feel my lack of talent, as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside. But, my God, how I wanted to learn, to change, to improve!
• Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work.
• I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.
• As Michael (Chekhov)'s pupil, I learned more about acting. I learned psychology, history, and the good manners of art -- taste.
• Acting became important. It became an art that belonged to the actor, not to the director or producer, or the man whose money had bought the studio. It was an art that transformed you into somebody else, that increased your life and mind. I had always loved acting and tried hard to learn it. But with Michael Chekhov, acting became more than a profession to me. It became a sort of religion.
• 1956 interview about her childhood: Looking back, I guess I used to play-act all the time. For one thing, it meant I could live in a more interesting world than the one around me.
• I'm trying to find myself as a person, sometimes that's not easy to do. Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do. The best way for me to find myself as a person is to prove to myself that I am an actress.
