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Home
Authors
Gene Tierney
American
Actress
About the author
When you have spent an important part of your life playing Let's Pretend, it's often easy to see symbolism where none exists.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Life
What a different world it was when I first sailed for Europe in 1930, with my mother, sister, and brother to spend six months abroad.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#World
#First
#Europe
#Mother
#Months
#Brother
#Sister
When I met Jack Kennedy, he was a serious young man with a dream. He was not a womanizer, not as I understood the term.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Man
#Dream
We cannot calculate the numbers of people who left, fled or were fished out of Europe just ahead of the Holocaust.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#People
#Europe
#Numbers
Unlike the stage, I never found it helpful to be good in a bad movie.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
Trying to make order out of my life was like trying to pick up a jellyfish.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Life
#Trying
#Order
Throughout my career, I was to be cast as a frontier girl, an aristocrat, an Arabian, a Eurasian, a Polynesian, and a Chinese.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Career
When my mood was high, I seemed normal, even buoyant. I felt smarter. I had secrets. I could see God in a light bulb.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#God
#Light
#Secrets
Wealth, beauty, and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need to be useful.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Beauty
#Fame
#Wealth
Cars, furs, and gems were not my weaknesses.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
I admire anyone who rids himself of an addiction.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Addiction
Hollywood can be hard on women, but it did not cause my problems.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Problems
#Hollywood
#Cause
#Women
For years it never occurred to me to question the judgment of those in charge at the studio.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Years
#Question
#Judgment
Fonda and Gary Cooper had the best sense of timing of all the actors I knew.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Sense
#Actors
Everyone should see Hollywood once, I think, through the eyes of a teenage girl who has just passed a screen test.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Hollywood
#Eyes
#Teenage
Eccentric behavior is not routinely noticed around a movie set.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Behavior
Day after day, I spent long afternoons in the talent pool, being told how to walk, how to talk, how to sit.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Talk
#Day
#Being
#Talent
Chaplin was notoriously strict with his sons and rarely gave them spending money.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Money
#Sons
As an actress, I was trained to show emotion I did not feel, or no emotion at all.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Emotion
About my career I was serious and earnest, sometimes impatient.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Career
I always tried to play my hunches.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Play
Children don't understand about people loving each other and then suddenly not.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#People
#Children
My mother would not talk to me for weeks, would not stay under my roof for as long as I was married to Oleg.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Talk
#Mother
I was not cut out to be a rebel.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
I was plunged into what was known as the debutante social whirl. This was one of the ways fathers justified their own hard work and sacrifices.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Work
#Hard work
#Fathers
I'm not sure I can explain the nature of Jack Kennedy's charm, but he took life just as it came.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Life
#Nature
#Charm
In later years, I craved foods that were almost always fattening.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Years
In my early days in Hollywood I tried to be economical. I designed my own clothes, much to my mother's distress.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Hollywood
#Mother
#Clothes
In the months leading up to World War II, there was a tendency among many Americans to talk absently about the trouble in Europe. Nothing that happened an ocean away seemed very threatening.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Talk
#Nothing
#World
#Trouble
#War
#Leading
#Europe
#Americans
#Months
#Ocean
#World war
It is difficult to write about any form of mental disease, especially your own, without sounding as if you were examining a bug under glass.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Disease
It was the fashion of the time, still is, to feel that all actors are neurotic, or they would not be actors.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Time
#Fashion
#Actors
I was going to live on my salary or go down swinging.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
Men are wonderful. I adore them. They always give you the benefit of the doubt.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Men
#Doubt
Life is a little like a message in a bottle, to be carried by the winds and the tides.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Life
#Tides
Rehearsals and screening rooms are often unreliable because they can't provide the chemistry between an audience and what appears on the stage or screen.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
Some women feel the best cure for a broken heart is a new beau.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Heart
#Women
#Cure
The Hollywood structure was monopolistic, run by four or five big studios.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Hollywood
The Howard Hughes I knew began to change after his plane crash in 1941.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Change
The main cause of my difficulties stemmed from the tragedy of my daughter's unsound birth and my inability to face my feelings.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Daughter
#Tragedy
#Cause
#Difficulties
#Feelings
The word actress has always seemed less a job description to me than a title.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Word
#Job
There were days that I worked all the time, without a layoff, or a rest, finishing one picture and reporting for another sometimes on the same day.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Time
#Day
#Rest
Those who become mentally ill often have a history of chronic pain.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#History
#Pain
Houses are one of my passions. I probably should have been an interior decorator.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Houses
Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Jealousy
#Faults
I had no romantic interest in Gable. I considered him an older man.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Man
#Interest
#Romantic
My departure from Hollywood was described as a walk-out. No one understood that I was cracking up.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Hollywood
#Departure
I was fortunate enough to work under directors who were, most of them, brilliant, emotional men.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Work
#Men
I ask myself: Would I have been any worse off if I had stayed home or lived on a farm instead of shock treatments and medication?
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Home
I dated dozens of young men, had fun with all, made commitments to none.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Fun
#Men
I do not recall spending long hours in front of a mirror loving my reflection.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Reflection
I existed in a world that never is - the prison of the mind.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#World
#Prison
#Mind
I followed the same diet for 20 years, eliminating starches, living on salads, lean meat, and small portions.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Years
#Living
#Diet
I had been offered a Hollywood contract before my 18th birthday. It gave me the spark I needed.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Hollywood
#Birthday
I had known Cole Porter in Hollywood and New York, spent many a warm hour at his home, and met the talented and original people who were drawn to him.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#People
#Hollywood
#Home
I approached everything, my job, my family, my romances, with intensity.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Family
#Job
I have a role now that I think becomes me. I am a grandmother.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Now
I remember the 1940s as a time when we were united in a way known only to that generation. We belonged to a common cause-the war.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Time
#War
#Cause
#United
I was fine when it came to cheering up others, not so fine with myself.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
I used up every cent I earned as an actress.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
I simply did not want my face to be my talent.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Want
#Talent
I am not the kind of woman who excuses her mistakes while reminding us of what used to be.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Mistakes
#Woman
#Excuses
I needed to be accepted, not humored. I intended to act.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Act
I loved to eat. For all of Hollywood's rewards, I was hungry for most of those 20 years.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Hollywood
#Years
I learned quickly at Columbia that the only eye that mattered was the one on the camera.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Eye
I knew I could not cope with the future unless I was able to rediscover the past.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Past
#Future
I hole up now and then and do nothing for days but read.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Now
#Nothing
I used to annoy my father by telling him how much I felt luck was with me.
Gene Tierney,
American
Actress
#Father
#Luck