Lorna Luft Quotes

The William Morris Agency handled me. In that business, you're only as good as your last picture.

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.

I'm a movie star. Can I talk to my entertainment lawyer?

I've been close to Bette Davis for thirty-eight years - and I have the cigarette burns to prove it.

When you worked in a studio it was the studio system that you kind of missed because it was a big, big family. I mean MGM had 5,000 people working a day there. You miss it.

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.

I got good notice from that show, and on the last day of filming Townies, Twentieth Century Fox called wanting to meet with me about a development deal.

My grandmother was an actress too. In the thirties and forties she was under contract with Universal Studios. Crazy credits, lots of them. My dad was also under contract with Universal Studios. And my first film was shot on the same stage they both worked on at Universal.

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.

We were all ruled by the studio system. I signed a contract for seven years.

If I would characterize my life, I would say that I was a very lucky actor who came into very lucky times, and got to Hollywood, and was put under contract by Warners in the very last days of the studio contract era, and was privileged to go through that time which is gone now.

If did go back to school, I would want to learn another aspect of the entertainment industry like to become a producer or an agent, you need a law degree.

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.

When you go in to do a screen test, you negotiate your contract and sign all your paperwork before you even get on a plane.

I didn't know box office was a thing you could possess but I don't have it. I go up for lovely roles and people with this nebulous thing called box office get them so there isn't much I can do about that unless you know where I can get some box-office myself!

It's not like I'm the lead actor or anything. But it's really cool to be in a Steven Soderbergh movie.

While growing up, I always wanted to see myself on the big screen - more so because there were no laptops then, and viewing on mobile was a far-fetched dream.

I was 12 when I decided that I wanted to see myself on the big screen.

I used to be very photogenic. My brother took a lot of pictures of me in Dubai. I thought maybe I could be a movie star. There was a hurdle, though - I didn't know anything about films.

I didn't grow up watching Hindi films and loving them, or wanting to become a Bollywood actor. That, to me, was the most fantastical idea.

Being a movie star is a quality that somebody sort of embodies, and being a celebrity is something that people give to you. It has to do with being recognizable, as opposed to something that people recognize in you. I just hope to make good movies. I know that sounds simple, but it's true.

When I was in Middle of The Night, MGM came and offered me a contract and I said that when I got out of the play, I'd like to try it. I didn't know anything about making movies but I was certainly finding it interesting.

I never thought of myself as any kind of a film star, as many films as I've made - and I've made some really fun movies with good people. I've always been paired with someone because I'm not really box office, in that carrying-a-picture sense. I've always been busy, but not in the spotlight.

As a kid, I just was a contract player at MGM Studios. They put me into goodness knows how many different roles.Some of them were wonderful and some of them were very just distasteful and awful because I was playing out of my age range and I was thoroughly uncomfortable, let's put it that way. So it took me many years to find my acting feet.

[On her work in "Keep Your Powder Dry"] I didn't want to do it, but they said if I did it they would give me Undercurrent with Robert Taylor. Then they gave Undercurrent to Katharine Hepburn, so I left MGM.