Jean Arthur
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Jean Arthur (October 17, 1900 – June 19, 1991) was an American actress. She was one of Hollywood's favorite screen comediennes.
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- First I played ingenues and Western heroines; then I played Western heroines and ingenues. That diet of roles became as monotonous as a diet of spinach. The studio wouldn't trust me with any other kind of role, because I had no experience in any other kind. And I didn't see how I was ever going to acquire any other experience if I couldn't get any other kind of role. It was a vicious circle.
- I am not an adult, that's my explanation of myself. Except when I am working on a set, I have all the inhibitions and shyness of the bashful, backward child...Unless I have something very much in common with a person, I am lost. I am swallowed up in my own silence.
- I bumped into every kind of disappointment, and was frustrated at every turn. Roles promised me were given to other players, pictures that offered me a chance were shelved, no one was particularly interested in me, and I had not developed a strength of personality to make anyone believe I had special talents. I wanted so desperately to succeed that I drove myself relentlessly, taking no time off for pleasures, or for friendships - yet aiming at the stars, I was still floundering.
- I guess I became an actress because I didn't want to be myself.
- I hated the place - not the work, but the lack of privacy, those terrible prying fan magazine writers and all the surrounding exploitation.
- On Hollywood
- I've never had a single close intimate girl friend in all my life. I never had a chum to whom I could confide my secrets. I suppose that accounts for the fact that now it is so painfully difficult for me to open my heart and confide in people who are, so often, almost strangers. You have to learn so very young to open your heart.
- Speaking in the 1930s
- If people don't like your work, all the still pictures in the world can't help you and nothing written about you, even oceans of it, will make you popular.
- It's a strenuous job every day of your life to live up to the way you look on the screen.
- It's hardly fair for women to do the same things at the same hours every day of their lives, while men have new experiences, meet new people every day. I felt that way as a little girl, with two older brothers around the house. It seemed to me that they led adventurous lives, compared with mine. I felt cheated and frustrated. I became a tomboy in self-defense. I decided that I was going to do things that were exciting, or at least interesting.
- My very 'naturalness' was my undoing. I had to learn that to appear natural on the screen requires a vast amount of training, that is the test of an actors art. It would be more spectacular if I could say that out of the hurt and humiliation of that failure was born a determination to success, to prove I had the makings of an actress. But it wouldn't be true. That urge came later.
- On her early acting days
- The fact that I did not marry George Bernard Shaw is the only real disappointment I've had.
- Quite frankly, I'd rather have my throat slit.
- On doing interviews
