#mind

"I wanted to be appreciated for what I was as a person and what I had to offer. I didn’t feel my work meant anything there. I knew I was a good artist and I wanted to express my feelings. Not the writer’s or the director’s; I wanted to express me. I wanted to play the role of somebody who was mentally ill. I think I could have done a really good job, because I knew those feelings."

React to this quote

More by Kim Novak

See all

“When you’re happy, you’re on a cloud higher than anybody can see. All of a sudden, the cloud turns grey and it starts putting pressure on you and before you know it you’re down at the bottom of the hole again.”

“was before its time, really. I was not appreciated in my time. I think I'm appreciated more now. I'm glad to know that I'm still around to know that I'm more appreciated now.”

“I got so burned out on that picture that I wanted to leave the business, but then if you wait long enough you think, "Oh, I miss certain things." The making of a movie is wonderful. What's difficult is afterward when you have to go around and try to sell it. The actual filming, when you have a good script—which isn't often—nothing beats it.”

“I inherited my mental illness from my father, but the rape must have added to it…I ask how old she was and whether the rapist was known to her. “It was in my early teens by multiple boys in the back seat of a stranger’s car.”

“It was a tool for me. I could express what I was feeling, whether it's good feelings or bad feelings. In that case it was bad feelings. But it was like all of a sudden, 'Who cares what Donald Trump or anyone else thinks of you?'”

“… It’s exciting to dress up in gorgeous clothes and to feel sexy and to look sexy. It’s wonderful, but it’s a trap. You become satisfied with that being enough, then later in life it isn’t enough. So many people, once they got older and were no longer looked at for their beauty, just fell apart”