STERLING HAYDEN (1916-86)                           

‘I wonder whether there has ever before been a man who bought a schooner and joined the Communist Party all on the same day.

After completing Johnny Guitar opposite Joan Crawford in 1954, Sterling Hayden had this to say]: ‘There is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another picture with Joan Crawford. And I like money.’

ISLA FISHER (1976 – )                                            

[Born in Muscat, Oman, her Christian name is pronounced ‘Eye-Lah’, and she grew up in Perth, Western Australia]: ‘I auditioned for a movie recently, and when I went in, the producer said he’d told one of his stars, Naomi Watts, that he was auditioning me, and she’d said, ‘She’s so funny; she’s a great actress – you should hire her.’ What a lovely, kind, and supportive thing to do for another woman.’

JANE RUSSELL (1921-2011)                                 

‘Yes, Howard Hughes invented a bra for me. Or, he tried to. And one of the seamless ones like they have now. He was way ahead of his time. But I never wore it in The Outlaw (1943). And he never knew. He wasn’t going to take my clothes off to check if I had it on. I just told him I did. They held up The Outlaw for five years. And Howard had me doing publicity for it every day, five days a week for five years! Publicity can be terrible. But only if you don’t have any.’

‘I have always been a Republican, and when I was in Hollywood long ago, most of the people there were Republican. The studio heads were all Republican, my boss Howard Hughes was a raving Republican, and we had a motion picture code in those days so they couldn’t do all this naughty stuff. We had John Wayne, we had Charlton Heston, we had a man named Ronald Reagan, we had Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Clark Gable. My father was a Republican, and he couldn’t stand what Franklin D. Roosevelt was doing to the country.

‘My son said, ‘Mother, you can’t say the word bigot because that has to do with nationalities and things. ’I said, ‘No darling, it’s a verb. It means I can’t stand these people who are trying to take the Ten Commandments off the wall, take prayer out of school and take prayer out of football games. It’s too ridiculous. The Lord put this country together or we wouldn’t be like we are.’

‘These days (2003) I am a tea-total, mean-spirited, right-wing, narrow-minded, conservative Christian bigot – but not a racist.’

‘People should never, ever have an abortion. Don’t talk to me about it being a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body. The choice is between life and death.’

[What happened when she found herself pregnant at age eighteen]: ‘The only solution was to find a quack and get an abortion. I had a botched abortion and it was terrible. Afterwards, my own doctor said, ‘what butcher did this to you?’ I had to be taken to hospital, I was so ill I nearly died. I’ve never known pain like it.’

[2001]: ‘I want to save America. I do not want a one-world order, a one-world government, at all. I think that our Founding Fathers had exactly the right idea, and we’ve got a great country, and let’s go back to God.’

JEAN PETERS (1926-2000)                                    

[Married to the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes from January 1957 until their divorce in June 1971, she steadfastly refused to discuss their union]: ‘My life with Howard Hughes was and shall remain a matter on which I will have no comment.’

MARGOT ROBBIE (1990 – )                                  

I had told my mom that I had paid off her mortgage. That was something when I first started working and I was making money, I was speaking with a business manager and he said, ‘you should invest your money. What do you want to do with it?’ And I said, ‘first thing is I want to pay off my mom’s mortgage.’ He said, it was going to be a long time before I could afford to do that, but that’s what we worked towards. Every couple of months I’d check in, ‘do we have enough yet?’ And then eventually he was like, ‘you can afford to pay your mom’s mortgage.’ We did all the paperwork and stuff and it was a big secret to be sitting on for so long. But yeah, it was definitely one of the best moments of my life. It’s like, what any kid dreams of being able to do for your parent, and I feel very lucky that I actually had the opportunity to do that.’

HORST BUCHHOLZ (1933-2003)                                     

[Buchholz is the German actor who portrayed Chico in the 1960 classic western The Magnificent Seven]: ‘Yes, I also love men. Ultimately, I’m bi-sexual…I have always lived my life the way I wanted.’

BEN AFFLECK (1972 – )                                                    

[When asked why he thought             George W. Bush, after hearing that New York was under attack on Sept 11, remained in a Florida classroom, doing nothing, for several minutes]: ‘It’s obviously very disturbing footage. On the one hand, you see a reaction on a man’s face that he is clearly pained and shocked. I probably did the same thing sitting on my chair. I was completely freaked out and a little devastated. On the other hand, one does hope that in one’s leaders, that they have the instinct to spring into action, to take some action or make the appearance of taking some action. And I was disappointed to see that he didn’t do that, although I don’t entirely hold it against him because, frankly, I was as shocked and devastated as he was. Although I think flying around in Air Force One for eleven hours before coming back and landing in the White House was probably less forgivable.’