Eva Mendes Quotes

I used to love fast food because I had no money, and I was a struggling actor.

I was doing shows and flying economy, and nobody ever fed me. Or I'd be staying in hotels so cheap that by the time I'd get in, there wasn't any room service. I didn't eat for a long time. Not on purpose. You'd be on shoots with bad food or get on a plane, and the food would be so disgusting you couldn't eat it.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

My mom Marina and I were poor and hungry. We could sometimes not afford to eat - seriously. We lived together in a small town, called Berdyansk, in Ukraine. I was an only child. I don't think we would have survived if there had been more kids.

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

As an actress for most of my life, I am profoundly familiar with poverty.

I experienced firsthand what it means to be poor, what it means to go hungry, and that, I think, may be the reason, the root cause of why I'm able to work so hard, even these days.

I know what it's like not to have food in the fridge or money to buy more.

I didn't have money to eat when I was 21. When I was short on cash, I would sometimes scam food from fast food places. I'd go into fast food chains and pretend I was from a movie studio, tell them they didn't send us the right order and demand they fix it. I've tried to make that right whenever I could.

Sometimes we used to eat once a day... chicken backs. You could buy four chicken backs for a quarter.

Nothing in baseball can bring me down to the level where I was growing up in Pine Bluff, crying and broke. This is fun for me. Whenever you see me slumping, nah, I don't get upset; I'm all right.

I used to sit in front of McDonald's and ask people for dollars to get me a cheeseburger. It was bad.

There was a point when I almost gave up. I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't feed my pets.

It was a real hand-to-mouth existence in those early days - I'd have whatever dry cereal there was in the house for breakfast, 30 cents to spend on lunch and a hot dog for dinner. I did that for years. So there was definitely a hunger in me, of various kinds, to succeed.

I started writing lyrics out of desperation. I was broke and wondering where my next job, my next meal was coming from, although I had had several successful revue songs on Broadway.

There were days when my father didn't have money for food, and we slept hoping the next day something could be got from work.

As a young man, I lived through the Great Depression, when banks failed and so many lost their jobs and homes and went hungry. I was fortunate to have a job at a canning factory that paid 25 cents an hour.

My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.

In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.

I got up one Christmas morning and we didn't have nothing to eat. We didn't have an apple, we didn't have an orange, we didn't have a cake, we didn't have nothing.

When a poor man has bread, he has no salt, and when he has salt, he has no bread. If he has some seasoning he has no meat. If he has some meat, he has no seasoning.

I was trying to get an audition for 'Walker, Texas Ranger' and they wouldn't see me. And I was crestfallen, because I really needed money. And to be told you're not good enough to be seen by 'Walker, Texas Ranger' is a tough blow.

My mother was one of seven girls whose parents went to bed hungry so their children wouldn't. My father lost his mother when he was nine. He left school and went to work for the next 70 years. They emigrated to America with little more than the hope of a better life.

I used to live on one candy bar a day - it cost a nickel. I always remember the candy bar was called Payday. That was my payday. And that candy bar tasted so good, at night I would take one bite, and it was so beautiful.

I have been down and out, living in Brooklyn, no money even for a subway, no food whatsoever. Like, I remember just sitting in my room all day - even my television wasn't working!