LISA KUDROW (1963 – )                            

[Speaking of her Friends co-star, the late Matthew Perry]: Thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said, that my muscles ached and tears poured down my face every day. Thank you for your open heart in a six-way relationship that required compromise. And a lot of talking. Thank you for showing up at work when you weren’t well and then being completely brilliant. Thank you for the best ten years a person gets to have.’

VINCENT PRICE (1911-93)                       

[On Gene Tierney]: ‘Gene was the most under-rated actress we ever had! I’ve known her since she was about seventeen, and I adored her. She really wasn’t a great beauty or sex idol. When you look at Laura (1944), and people ask why it has lasted, I think it is because of Gene Tierney. She didn’t have a great body, but had a body that wore clothes well.’

MAURICE CHEVALIER (1888 – 1972)               

[On Jeanette MacDonald]: ‘I later hears her referred to as the ‘Iron Butterfly’, although I was surprised to hear that she found that amusing. I never thought she had much of a sense of humor.  When we worked together she always objected to anyone telling a risqué story.’

ERIC IDLE (1943 – )                                                            

‘We couldn’t get [Life of Brian (1979) made]. We looked and looked for money but we couldn’t find anyone to back it. Only George Harrison would back it – and that’s because he mortgaged his house!’

‘When we got to North America it was extraordinary to find that everybody assumed that we were totally stoned all the time while making it [Monty Python] up. You had to point out to people that actually you can’t write comedy when your stoned, you can’t find the typewriter, but a lot of people still say to this day, ‘Oh, when I was a college kid, man, we’d just get a joint and watch Python and we’d laugh and laugh.’ And you think, ‘Well, actually you didn’t need Python, you could just look at the wallpaper!’

RUSSELL MEANS (1939 – 2012)                          

[Russell portrayed Chingachgook in 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans]: ‘You see the one thing I’ve always maintained is that I’m an American Indian. I’m not a Native American. I’m not politically correct. Everyone who’s born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if yon tice, I put ‘American’ before my ethnicity. I’m not a hyphenated African-American, Or Irish-American, or Jewish-American, or Mexican-American.’

Hollywood hasn’t changed. It is the most racist, anti-Indian institution in the world.’

MIRA SORVINO (1967 – )  With her father, actor Paul Sorvino                                     

[In May 2018, Mira spoke about Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein]: ‘The Cosby verdict was a milestone for everyone. Please, God, let Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein, be next. I mean we really need criminal proceedings against him. He’s lost his position, he lost what he loved to do, he lost some money, but he hasn’t lost his freedom. He committed numerous crimes, and he raped people I care deeply about, and he needs to pay for that.’

JEFF GOLDBLUM (1952 – )                                  

[On his involvement with co-star, Laura Dern, in 1993’s Jurassic Park]: ‘Well, you know, I’m very easily stirred. And she’s a remarkable woman. So I was struck with that from the beginning. But it wasn’t until the film was over that we formed an alliance. I had been discreetly casting glances across the dinosaur. It’s mysterious what attracts you to a person.’

RIP TORN (1931 – 2019)                                         

‘Don’t ever humiliate a man. If you are gonna have to dress him out, you take him aside and do it that way. That’s the one thing I don’t like about Hollywood. They go in for public humiliation. You shouldn’t do that to a man.’

‘I’ve never hit anybody who hasn’t clocked me two or three times.’

LAURA DERN (1967 – )                                          

[About working on The West Wing with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin]: ‘Aaron Sorkin is a genius, with this crazy, brilliant brain that works a million miles a minute. And I had never worked around someone who, as you’re filming, can give you three more pages.  ‘I’d never really worked in television, and it moves so quickly. It was just an amazing experience to watch someone continue to stop at nothing, to come up with more, or new, or different, working and creating as you’re shooting. So all I can say is just that Aaron Sorkin is brilliant, and it’s wonderful to be around his brilliant brain.’

JON LOVITZ (1957 – )                                             

[About his portrayal of Harvey Fierstein on Saturday Night Live]: ‘I did Harvey Fierstein. He didn’t like it. He came into the show to complain about it. His point was that he was getting more famous as me than as him…He came in to talk about it, and watching him, I realized that I was doing him quite well. He thought I was doing a gay stereotype.’

[To Conan O’Brien]: ‘I heard you call me immature earlier. Well, you’re just a big poop-head!’

COURTENEY COX (1964 – )                                 

‘I have to be physically attracted to someone. But I can’t just be with someone just because it’s great sex. Because orgasms don’t last long enough. Honesty is the key to a relationship. If you can fake that, you’re in.’

[On playing Monica and Chandler on Friends]: ‘It’s so much fun for us…. Now we have something really fun to play – two really neurotic people trying to have a relationship. They’re both afraid to commit, to get married, or take these steps. I have a really good time playing with him [Matthew Perry as Chandler]. It’s kind of like our relationship in real life – except we don’t kiss.’

MARNI NIXON (1930-2016)                                   

[She provided the singing for a number of movie stars who were incapable of doing justice to their singing roles]: ‘You always had to sign a contract that nothing would be revealed. Twentieth Century Fox, (when I did The King and I in 1956), threatened me. If anyone ever knows you did any part of the dubbing for Deborah Kerr, we’ll see to it that you won’t work in this town again.’ The anonymity didn’t bother me until I sang Natalie Wood’s songs in West Side Story (1961). Then I saw how important my singing was to the picture. I was giving my talent and somebody else was taking the credit.’