Anne Bancroft Quotes

1. The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it.

2. Life is here only to be lived so that we can, through life, earn the right to death, which to me is paradise. Whatever it is that will bring me the reward of paradise, I'll do the best I can.

3. The studios wanted to give me the Monroe-type sex buildup. I wanted to develop my acting, not my body.

4. (on "The Graduate") To this day, when men meet me, there's always that movie in the back of their mind.


5. (on her Mrs. Robinson role in "The Graduate") Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be - and that we're ordinary.

6. When Mel told his Jewish mother he was marrying an Italian girl, she said: "Bring her over. I'll be in the kitchen - with my head in the oven".

7. If there are, let's say, 20 astronauts, there may be two women among those 20 astronauts. If there are 20 FBI guys, there's one woman and the rest are men. So when somebody writes a script about life, usually the leading role will be the man, because mostly what women do is at home taking care of the children...That's the most important job there is on Earth. And why shouldn't women have it since they are the better of the two sexes?

8. If you marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons, then no matter how hard you work, it's never going to work, because then you have to completely change yourself, completely change them, completely - by that time, you're both dead. So I think you have to marry for the right reasons, and marry the right person.

9. (on her husband Mel Brooks) He understands not only with his brain but with his heart. And that might be called love. Not quite sure, but maybe that's the key. 







10. The only reason I'm still not doing "Daughter of Gorilla at Large" is because my personal life had become a shambles. Every picture I did was worse than the last one and every man I was in love with was worse than the last one. I was terribly immature. I was going steadily downhill in terms of self-respect and dignity.

11. I was at a point where I was ready to say I am what I am because of what I am and if you like me I'm grateful, and if you don't, what am I going to do about it?

12. (on John Ford) Marvelous but loony, tearing out pages of the script everywhere.

13. I don't quite jump for joy, but I am awfully glad to see him.

14. (on Mel Brooks) When he comes home at night and I hear his key in the lock I say to myself: "Oh good! The party's about to begin".

15. When I arrived in town, the movie industry was looking for sexpot glamor girls. I didn't qualify. Nor was I ever offered a top-flight movie. But there isn't any bitterness on my part. I wasn't as good an actress then as I am now.

16. I am quite surprised, that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about "The Miracle Worker". We're talking about "Mrs. Robinson". I understand the world…I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet.

17. I'd never had so much pleasure with another human being.

18. I identified with both women. But Emma had a stronger message for the women I want to speak to now - women who work. I wanted to tell them that choosing to work doesn't make them oddballs and isn't antisocial. 

19. There are always good parts. They may not pay what you want, and they may not have as many days' work as you want, they may not have the billing that you want, they may not have a lot of things, but - the content of the role itself - I find there are many roles.


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