Ava Gardner famous quotes

Don't think for a minute that bad publicity and endless criticism don't leave their claw marks on everyone concerned. Your friends try to cheer you up by saying lightly, "I suppose you get used to it, and ignore it." You try. You try damned hard. But you never get used to it. It always wounds and hurts.
-- Ava Gardner

#Hurt #Cheer #Thinking

When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.
-- Ava Gardner

#Strong #Couple #Spring

I wish to live to 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.
-- Ava Gardner

#Glasses #Hands #Years

Although no one believes me, I have always been a country girl and still have a country girl's values
-- Ava Gardner

#Girl #Country #Believe

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

#Heart #Giving #Soul

What I'd really like to say about stardom is that it gave me everything I never wanted.
-- Ava Gardner

#Stardom #Wanted

When I lose my temper, honey, you can't find it any place.
-- Ava Gardner

#Honey #Temper

When I'm old and gray, I want to have a house by the sea. And paint. With a lot of wonderful chums, good music, and booze around. And a damn good kitchen to cook in.
-- Ava Gardner

#Hate #Sea #House

Sex isn't all that important, but it is when you love someone very much.
-- Ava Gardner

#Sex #When You Love Someone #Important

It’s a pity nobody believes in simple lust anymore.
-- Ava Gardner

#Believe #Simple #Lust

If I had my life to live over again, I'd live it the same way. Maybe a few changes here or there, but nothing special. The truth is, honey, I've enjoyed my life. I've had a hell of a good time.
-- Ava Gardner

#Special #Honey #Way

Maybe, in the final analysis, they saw me as something I wasn't and I tried to turn them into something they could never be. I loved them all but maybe I never understood any of them. I don't think they understood me.
-- Ava Gardner

#Marriage #Thinking #Finals

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

#Thinking #Reason #Wells

I was never an actress -- none of us kids at Metro were. We were just good to look at.
-- Ava Gardner

#Kids #Looks #Actresses

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
-- Ava Gardner

#Running #Taken #Sleep

I've certainly never taken the care of myself that I should have. On the contrary. I've done a lot of late nights without enough sleep and all that. But I've had fun. Whatever wrinkles are there, I've enjoyed getting them.
-- Ava Gardner

#Fun #Taken #Sleep

I must have seen more sunrises than any other actress in the history of Hollywood
-- Ava Gardner

#Sunrise #Hollywood #Actresses

All I have going is my looks. When my beauty goes, I'm through.
-- Ava Gardner

#Looks

I don't mind growing old. If I have to go before my time, this is how I'll go-- cigarette in one hand, glass of scotch in the other.
-- Ava Gardner

#Scotch #Glasses #Hands

For the loot, honey, for the loot.
-- Ava Gardner

#Retirement #Honey

Fame gives you everything you never wanted.
-- Ava Gardner

#Giving #Fame #Wanted

I do everything for a reason. Most of the time the reason is money.
-- Ava Gardner

#Reason

I am deeply superficial.
-- Ava Gardner

#Ego #Superficial

Hollywood - that's a place where love is viewed both pragmatically and philosophically in the saying, 'Tis better to have loved and divorced than never to have had any publicity at all.
-- Ava Gardner

#Love Is #Publicity #Hollywood

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
-- Ava Gardner

#Sexy #Mistake #Thinking

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.
-- Ava Gardner

#Husband #Years #Two

He will always be my Sir Galahad.
-- Ava Gardner

#Galahad

Our phone bills were astronomical, and when I found the letters Frank wrote me the other day, the total could fill a suitcase. Every single day during our relationship, no matter where in the world I was, I'd get a telegram from Frank saying he loved me and missed me. He was a man who was deseperate for companionship and love. Can you wonder that he always had mine!
-- Ava Gardner

#Men #Phones #And Love

God knows I've got so many frailties myself, I ought to be able to understand and forgive them in others. But I don't.
-- Ava Gardner

#Forgiving #Able #Frailty

So this was where lust was satisfied. If I'd been an old-time miner I'd have asked for my gold nugget back.
-- Ava Gardner

#Lust #Gold #Nuggets

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.
-- Ava Gardner

#Inspiration #Superficial

I hate cheating. I won’t put up with it. I don’t do it myself.
-- Ava Gardner

#Cheating #Hate #I Hate

I want to remember it all, the good times and the bad times, the late nights, the boozing, the dancing into dawns, and all the great and not-so-great people I met and loved in those years…
-- Ava Gardner

#Night #Years #People

Sing me not a song; let me hear your recital of veneration and respect; this I will listen to over and over when I share your need of pleasing.
-- Ava Gardner

#Respect #Song #Needs

The truth is that the only time I'm happy is when I'm doing absolutely nothing. I don't understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of ***** duty. Doing nothing feel like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.
-- Ava Gardner

#People #Perfect #Water

And the news got worse. It appeared that there was this whole other person Jesus Christ whose birthday a lot of people tended to confuse with mine. I was personally outraged. It was a long time before I forgave the Lord for that.
-- Ava Gardner

#Jesus #Long #People

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.
-- Ava Gardner

#Years #White #Twelve

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.
-- Ava Gardner

#Animal #Men #Drunk

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.
-- Ava Gardner

#Makeup #Directors #Firsts

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.
-- Ava Gardner

#Taken #Lazy #Acting

Women's liberation as a movement makes some valid points. But in the final analysis, it doesn't matter who wears the pants - as long as there's money in the pockets.
-- Ava Gardner

#Money #Long #Pockets

Fame and fortune does not mean anything if you don't have a happy home.
-- Ava Gardner

#Life #Home #Mean

Love is nothing but a pain in the ass
-- Ava Gardner

#Pain #Love Is #Ass

I either write the book or sell the jewels. And I'm kinda sentimental about the jewels.
-- Ava Gardner

#Book #Writing #Jewels

I couldn't imagine a better place [Australia] for making a film on the end of the world.
-- Ava Gardner

#Australia #World #Film

After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled: “She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!”
-- Ava Gardner

#Hands #Directors #Tests

Elizabeth Taylor is not beautiful, she is pretty—I was beautiful.
-- Ava Gardner

#Beautiful

Petting is the study of the anatomy in braille.
-- Ava Gardner

#Study #Braille #Anatomy