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'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess.
A Republican. A Republican. That's worse than being a goddamned Communist!
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.
Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.
Going down on a woman gives me a stiff neck, going down on a man gives me lockjaw and conventional sex gives me claustrophobia.
I detest acting because it is sheer drudgery.
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.'
I'm not childless, darling. I am childfree.
If you know your Bible and your Shakespeare and can shoot craps, you have a liberal education.
It's unlikely I'll ever submit to a psychiatrist's couch. I don't want some stranger prowling around through my psyche, monkeying with my id. I don't need an analyst to tell me that I have never had any sense of security. Who has?
[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.
A frozen daiquiri of a scorching afternoon is soothing. It makes living more tolerable.
[To the man who came up to her at a party and exclaimed effusively, 'Tallulah! I haven't seen you for 41 years!':] I thought I told you to wait in the car.
Whatever you have read I have said is almost certainly untrue, except if it is funny, in which case I definitely said it.