Leslie Caron Quotes

In the contract days, the big studios groomed us to play particular roles and we would stay with the image they gave us and insisted on.

When the major studios flourished many years ago, an actor was groomed, developed, and worked frequently at his craft. The studios really took care of their actors.

I came in on the tail end of the old school of Hollywood.

When I was starting out, young actresses had the studio system to protect them. Now you have a host of sharks, from your agent to your publicist to your lawyer.

In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.

When my mother signed at MGM, that was the only kind of contract you could sign. There was no such thing as an independent agent.

The studios knew how to build a star, and they knew what to do with you. They also taught you everything.

It would almost need a Mafia-like offer I couldn't refuse to do another movie.

I was one of the horses of the Louis B. Mayer stable, and I thought the films I was given after my Academy Awards were not worthy.

Hollywood executives believe that money is both the be-all and end-all to the moviemaking process.

Think of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges. They used the same actors over and over again.

The Hollywood structure was monopolistic, run by four or five big studios.

A lot of actors said they hated the studio system, but I loved it. It was like a college; it was a great place to learn.

Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.

Agents have enormous power that studios relinquished to them. The studios, when I first came to Hollywood, that's where the power was.

Indie movies got co-opted by the studio system. The studios insisted that only stars could make movies successful.

A lot of my friend's mothers and parents worked at Paramount Studios, so I would always go. I met the Fonz when I was really young, like four or five years old. I was always around people in entertainment all the time throughout my whole life.

More than any other president, save perhaps John F Kennedy, whose father ran a film studio, and Ronald Reagan, a leading man and governor of California, Trump is on a buddy basis with media moguls, a speed dialer with the heads of studios and media conglomerates.

I was on Warner Bros. for a minute.

Having been subjected to the pigeonholing of Hollywood myself, I realized that once you become a studio-approved director, your chances of ever making your own film again are zero. You make the films that the studio wants you to make.

Studios are used to have an investment in you, an actual, literal investment in an actor. You paid them some money, you had a contract with them and you were almost like a commodity.

L.A. is this huge epicenter of the most popular person. Can you imagine, every single high school in the world where someone says, "You're so beautiful, you could be a movie star," all of those one people move to this town called L.A.

The first time I ever intersected with the quote unquote industry or Hollywood or being given a paid job as a director all came because of the reputation I got coming out of Sundance as a veteran Sundance filmmaker.

My agent at the time, Mike Medavoy, before he became a movie mogul, called me up and said, how about a movie with you and Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman? And I said, well, what makes you think of that? He said because I now handle you and Peter Marty.

Hollywood's a great place to live... if you're a grapefruit.