Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankheadwas an American actress of the stage and screen, and a reputed libertine. Bankhead was known for her husky voice, outrageous personality, and devastating wit. Originating some of the 20th-century theater's preeminent roles in comedy and melodrama, she gained acclaim as an actress on both sides of the Atlantic. Bankhead became an icon of the tempestuous, flamboyant actress, and her unique voice and mannerisms are often subject to imitation and parody...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActress
Date of Birth31 January 1903
CountryUnited States of America
I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery.
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.
Acting is a form of confession.
Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia.
Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.
Wracked with a hangover I do my muttering over a Black Velvet, a union of champagne and stout. Don't be swindled into believing there's any cure for a hangover. I've tried them all: iced tomatoes, hot clam juice, brandy peaches. Like the common cold it defies solution. Time alone can stay it. The hair of the dog? That way lies folly. It's as logical as trying to put out a fire with applications of kerosene.
I have been absolutely hag-ridden with ambition. If I could wish to have anything in the world it would be to be free of ambition.
I've been called many things, but never an intellectual.
I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, 'I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.'
There is less in this than meets the eye.
A Republican. A Republican. That's worse than being a goddamned Communist!
I'm not childless, darling. I am childfree.
[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me.
My progress reminded me of the horses in The Whip. They raced at the limit of their speed directly toward the audience. But they raced on a treadmill which canceled out their progress.