- One day during shooting [What's New Pussycat (1965)], I just climbed up the ropes to the catwalk and started walking the beams. Very loudly and clearly I called down to everyone on the set, 'I'm going to jump.' A French technician grabbed me, and there I was, hanging by one arm.
[After transfer to the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic in New York]: It was horrendous. You're crazy because they say you're crazy. It was especially horrible because I couldn't figure out how to do what they wanted me to so I could get out. - He & She (1967) was worth it after what we'd been through. By working together we learned to live with each other again.
It took me a long time to find myself and I'm still looking around corners to see if I'm there. I used to wonder, why does Dick love me? After the baby [Ross Benjamin] was born, I could turn around and see it in myself. - Before I had the baby [Ross Benjamin] I felt lonely going to work. Now I have deeper, more generous feelings. I feel whole, like a human being.
- [on valuing her identity more than box-office success]. "I always kept a close . . . touch for what I really like. It's very easy to lose it, because sometimes it's ignored, who you are, so you begin to play other people's games. I didn't ever do that. Too big a loss if I had done that. To lose yourself-you don't want that. That's too scary".
- [About her psychological crisis while shooting "What's New Pussycat?" in Paris"]. "I was away from Dick, it was a very congenial group of people-to put it lightly!-and it's just what happened. A bit of a breakdown! I guess there was part of me that wondered, 'What's that like, if you go that far?' And then I knew."
- I do [a role] for the experience of doing it. If it goes well or it doesn't go well, it still has accomplished what I needed for that time. I haven't ever had the thing where I thought, 'I've got to get something out there or nobody will want me.' Somebody's going to want you. You have an obligation to just live life.
- You're never retired if you're an actress. You keep doing things. One of the reasons I went into acting was because I thought those characters by Chekhov, Shaw and Shakespeare I studied when I went to Northwestern [University] were so fascinating. I thought if I played those characters, I would find something out about myself. That's the fun of it. It never really ends, and you can always find something to do.
- [on playing a dramatic role] It's fun to get the opportunity to play a different kind of character. I looked on this as a real adventure. I just jumped in, which is what I was like when I was a little girl. I remember I went to a swimming pool with my mother. I didn't know how to swim. I said, 'Mother, I want to jump in,' and she said, 'Go ahead, honey.' So I jumped in. I've always had this sense of, 'I want to try that.'
- [on starring in her first film, Where the Boys Are (1960)] I felt like a fish out of water. Fortunately, in my first movie, there was Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux and Connie Francis. We all were Catholic so we had that feeling there was a kindred thing there. I kept up their friendships and talk to Dolores and see Connie from time to time. It worked out and I had good friends in the movie.
- [on The Stepford Wives (1975)] It's the first of the women's-lib kind of movies. It isn't pounding you on the head. It's doing it through horror and comedy, and that's a good genre.
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