Quotes

I've always had this American-pie face that would get work in commercials . . . I'd say things like, "Hi, Marge, how's your laundry?" and "Hi, I'm a real nice Georgia peach". Sometimes this work is one step above being a cocktail waitress.

Any movie I've ever made, the minute you walk on the set they tell you who's the person to buy it [cocaine] from. Cher said they're going to make two monuments to us--the two girls who lived through Hollywood and never had cocaine.

It's different things at different times, you know? It's like when you read a true crime story and think it's really good, then the next book you pick up is a biography and you really like that. I don't consider that I have to judge any of the movies I make all the time, but people are always asking me: "What's your favorite movie?" And I never know what to say. They're just jobs to me, really. I take the part I'm lucky enough to get and do the best I can and then -- I don't know, they're just jobs.

Listen, I don't know. It's all theory. If I knew what I was talking about, I would be running the studio. That's why they keep changing the heads of the studios: Nobody knows. Nobody knows. But I'm sure it has affected the quality of movies. Being sensitive to the problem of women is just another symptom of the quality of movies: I don't think you can do anything that's very sensitive. Everything's sort of broad strokes and big gestures--adventure things that boys, guys--want to see.

The business is in a funny position these days. They gear everything to those target audiences that make money. Things look more and more like TV and the quality becomes different. People aren't so interested in seeing movies about women's problems.

I would love to do a great part for a woman, like the role Anjelica Huston had in Les arnaqueurs (1990). There are 60 million people on this block, alone, who would love to do those kind of parts, too. It's a tough, competitive business out there; keep hanging in, that's the thing.

[1983 interview] In our mothers' generation, the thing was to stay at home and have somebody take care of you. It's a funny thing because I don't know how I feel. Women who have careers have to face the fact that if they want to have a relationship or a marriage - then they're going to have two jobs. It's a tough question!

Comedy is really a mystery, because you are either funny or you're not. I think being funny is having intelligence and having wit.

I never stopped taking acting classes. I took them with anybody who was going on, from the very beginning. And I went back [East] to study with Lee Strasberg, Harold Clurman. Stella Adler I think was my favorite, and she would go back and forth from New York to L.A. And then in between that, there were all kinds of other people -- like, there was guy named Jack Walter. There was Eric Morris. Eric Morris' class was my first class, and Jack Nicholson was in that class, and that was before he worked. God, that was a long time ago. I was a kid.

[on how she got the part in Frankenstein junior (1974)] I did the movie Conversation secrète (1974) with Gene Hackman, like one scene. It was a completely straight scene. Then I got Frankenstein junior (1974) after that and, yeah, that was my big break. And I went and auditioned at, like, a cattle call, 500 girls there. I think Farrah Fawcett was one of them. Everyone was auditioning for the part of the fiancee, and Mel Brooks kept saying, "I want Madeline Kahn, but she doesn't want to do it." She'd just done Mel's movie Le shérif est en prison (1974). And then finally one day, it was like my third call back, and he said, "Unfortunately, Madeline is going to do the part of the fiancee, but if you can come back tomorrow with a German accent, I'll let you audition for the lab assistant." I said, "OK. Tomorrow? I have until tomorrow to get a German accent." So I had to just jump in and do it, which I did, and it was great. It was really a great experience.

[on favorite role she has played] I like the character in Tootsie (1982) because she was in the middle of the feminist movement and she didn't know whether to have a career or have a boyfriend. And it was all steeped in that New York acting class scene, which really made me laugh. Dustin Hoffman and I really laughed about that, because he came from the same place.

Being an actor, there's a fine line between being confident and being arrogant. You can't be arrogant. You have to be confident, and it's very hard to do. You can't think about it, either. You just have to do your work.

They only write parts for women where they let everything be steamrolled over them, where they let people wipe their feet all over them. Those are the kind of parts I play, and the kind of parts that there are for me in this world. In this life.

I like Cher. I still see her once in a while. I see her. I don't recognize her, but I see her.

[on her autobiography] You know I was originally going to call that book, Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat? And they wouldn't let me, because it might offend someone. And now I know-live and learn-that I don't care. I should have done it.

[on Coup de coeur (1981)] God, that was long and tedious and hard. Francis [Ford Coppola] was outside in a trailer, just speaking over a loudspeaker to direct us. That was not easy. Over the loudspeaker he'd say, Let's do another take, and this time let's try acting, Ms. Garr.

[2005, on living with multiple sclerosis] I really do count my blessings. At least I used to. Now I get so tired I have a woman come once a week and count them for me.

MS is a sneaky disease. Like some of my boyfriends, it has a tendency to show up at the most awkward times and then to disappear entirely.

[on working with Dustin Hoffman] It's not enough to give in to him. You have to like what he wants too!

[on having MS] I've had a couple of incidents. When I first started getting a lot of weakness in my leg, I live in a two-story house, I fell down the stairs three days in a row, I went 'all right, wait, this has got to stop'. I have to walk down one step at a time now, so it takes me a long time to get down a stairway, the stairs in my house, but I learn, and I roll with the punches, I learn to adjust to it.