People build up a life, it becomes unsatisfactory, and they want to figure out how to change it like an outfit on a doll. But you can’t change life from the outside. We all know this now.

I was given baby doll toys myself, and they proved a stark reminder that my life was expected to revolve around childbearing - just as my mom's had before me, and her mom's had before her.

When I was still playing with dolls, I became aware of this terrible and incomprehensible thing for me: My father was not treated the same as others; we are not treated the same as others.

Well, I don't even know how to drive in this life, so I'm pretty far from ever having the life of being a stuntdouble. I liked- I had an Evil Knievel doll when i was a kid, that's about it!

Through their play Barbara imagined their lives as adults. They used the dolls to reflect the adult world around them. They would sit and carry on conversations, making the dolls real people.

I came from product design originally - I had been designing dolls for a toy company since I was 16 - so I'm used to working with plastic and different things. I had an innate interest in objects.

Since too few Americans go to the polls, I say what this country needs is a bobblehead election, where voters will get free bobblehead dolls of their choice when they show up and vote for president.

I had a lot of Barbies growing up, and a lot of porcelain dolls, but I was scared of them. I was so scared of them, I would try to turn their head away and would make my mom take them out of my room.

I started writing books and making clothes for my dolls when I was around 10 as a way of making my reality exciting. When I went out to play with friends, I always arranged elaborate sets and costumes.

I didn't like Barbie dolls, so I used to have this overactive imagination, and I used to pretend to be all these different things. My weird childhood fetishes seem to have come to life now as an actor.

Even while starting out I took things very seriously; I wasn't the sort of kid that would do a doll commercial or do a series for Nickelodeon. They asked me to do silly things, and I wasn't a silly kid.

After the Pussycat Dolls, I was burnt out. So when I left them in 2010, I did take a second to say, 'Right, I've done this for seven years. Who the hell am I as an individual? Do I still want to do this?'

My first acting gig was a skit for Jay Leno on 'The Tonight Show.' It was this Barbie commercial where I got to pour mud all over Barbie dolls and watch the heads pop off. It was so exciting, a lot of fun.

I came back to work when my children were two months old. At that early age, they seem to have little awareness of anybody but their Raggedy Ann dolls, so it wasn't a matter of them missing me. I was missing them.

This morning, I went to wipe my hands on a tea towel, and while I was using it, it seemed like it felt a bit light. I unfolded it and realized my daughter had cut little bits out of it to make frocks for her dolls!

I used to tiptoe up to my bedroom door and leap into my room in an attempt to surprise my dolls in the midst of some kind of action. Unfortunately, they were always too quick for me. I'm still disappointed about that.

A walk through the storage facility of the community museum where I worked might easily have convinced you that people in the past wore only wedding dresses, carried silver candlesticks, and played with porcelain dolls.

What we ask is to be human individuals, however peculiar and unexpected. It is no good saying: "You are a little girl and therefore you ought to like dolls"; if the answer is, "But I don't," there is no more to be said.

Monroe, the consummate sexual doll, is empowered to act but afraid to act, perhaps because no amount of acting, however inspired,can convince the actor herself that her ideal female life is not a dreadful form of dying.

I had many dolls. And you know how I played with them? By performing insurrections, assemblies, scenes of arrest. My dolls were almost never babies to be nursed but men and women who attacked barracks and ended up in prison.

My mom was a big feminist, and when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to have typical girl toys: she did not let me have dolls. Barbies were banned in our household. She read feminist books to me; my mom was a major feminist.

It's a weird kind of disconnect that this whole story [he Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane] grew around a real doll of mine, and here he is, with his "Edward" expression on his face. It's kind of reality bumping into fantasy.

I grew up with six brothers, and I'm from Chicago, so princesses and Barbie dolls were not around the house. It was more like sports and comic books, so getting to work for Marvel is like my version of being able to be a princess.

I was a huge Bowie fan since I was 12 years old. That was the first 'punk' rock I got into in the Seventies. I didn't find out about a lot of the other stuff that was going on, like New York Dolls and Roxy Music, until a lot later.

The few movies I can even think of that I watch over and over would be the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton movie 'Boom!', 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!', and 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.' I wouldn't call any of them mainstream.

What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.

I used to be the youngest person on the set [of Bored To Death]. Now I'm very often the oldest person on the set. I feel lucky about that, to be honest. Lena [Dunham], by the way is a doll to me. So much fun to work with and really open.

It's like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it's silly. A toy I've played with too often. It's a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly.

I didn't like playing with dolls; I didn't like getting dressed up. A lot of my friends and people I went to school with were into fashion and their clothes, so I lacked a bit of self-belief and confidence... I wasn't really comfortable.

With two older brothers, I was a tomboy in one sense, but on the other hand I really loved dolls. My brothers weren't very happy when I nicked their Action Men to play with my dolls and they were appalled when I made them kiss my Barbies.

Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing.

Let's be honest, working in stop motion is awful. It's the worst. It's such a stupid way to make a movie. It's ridiculous. You're literally playing around with these dolls that are maybe 9 inches tall, trying to coax a performance out of it.

Growing up, I wasn't allowed dolls, and my brothers weren't allowed guns. I inherited my brothers' clothes. I was never dressed in pink, and they were never dressed in blue; there were none of those rules that people still bizarrely subscribe to.

Growing up, I was very conservative in my wardrobe, so when I first joined the Pussycat Dolls, the biggest challenge was wearing those cabaret costumes. I didn't feel comfortable showing my body so much, showing my legs and butt, chest and midriff.

I loved being in my sister's room. I really admired her and wore her clothes to play in, played with her dolls, played with her makeup. She had a mirror with settings to see what you would look like in different lighting. I thought that was amazing.

I used to do my own make-up. I used to have this doll that had those big eyelashes on the top and bottom, and I think I copied her when I was doing my eyes, putting false eyelashes on the bottom as well as the top. So I came up with that look myself.

I was always very maternal with my friends. I wasn't the kind of little girl that played with dolls and pretended I was the mommy. I wasn't that child, so when I say I was always maternal, I don't mean in that sense - but I've always been a nurturer.

I have a big brother who would make dolls' houses and playhouses and furniture out of wood. He was the one who taught me from such a young age that you could just make something. The physical act of gluing something together was really formative for me.

I traveled with my mother, Lela, and there was never enough money. I always had to roll down my silk stockings and carry a doll when we bought train tickets so I could go half-fare. If we had $3, we always figured how to tip for the trunks and still eat.

I was always obsessed with being famous. I had Marilyn Monroe paper dolls as a child, and I was always obsessed with her. I've just been really driven in that direction, and none of my friends were. So, I don't know what put that bug in me at a young age.

Sometime in the early Seventies, gender-free toys were briefly a popular idea. So at Christmas on the California beach in 1972, we downplayed the dolls with frilly dresses and loaded up Santa's sack with toy trucks and earth movers for our three daughters.

You can't do opera when already from the 10th row you can only see little dolls on the stage. In such an enormous space you can't put much faith in the personal presence of the individual singer, which is reflected in facial expressions, among other things.

There's always those few people that are like, 'Why don't you play any of the material off your first two records?' And I'm like, 'For the same reason that I don't play with G.I. Joe dolls anymore.' It's like, 'I'm a grown-up.' I wrote that music when I was a kid.

I love to design. I am a commercial fashion designer. I always design jackets with two sleeves. I don't design jackets with three sleeves, or the layers and layers come off like little dolls from Russia. Fashion for me is a creative endeavor, but it is not art for me.

A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows "This is I." An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, "This is not I." Maud knew this neat division represented an over-simplification. The doll-mask she saw had nothing to do with her, nothing.

I can't just go in and throw clothes at a picture. I still have to have some kind of an idea of a character, of who she is, where she's from. It's almost like playing a child's game. You have your dolls, and you create characters for them. Fashion indulged that in me.

My father was Abe Burrows, who was a Broadway legend. 'Guys and Dolls,' 'How to Succeed,' 'Cactus Flower,' '40 Karats,' 'Can-Can,' 'Happy Hunting,' 'Reclining Figure,' it goes on. He was a legend, and when I was growing up, I was Abe Burrows' kid. That was my self-esteem.

I did a short film at Outfest, 'Where Are the Dolls,' based on an Elizabeth Bishop poem done, where I play this woman who is sort of walking the streets and ends up alone dancing in a club. I have this hot and heavy scene with a very beautiful actress. It became very popular.

I was born Joseph Lane, but when I applied to the actors union, they said they already had a Joe Lane on the books and I'd have to change my last or first name. I had played the character of Nathan Detroit, whom I liked very much, in 'Guys and Dolls,' so I took the name Nathan.

I definitely had dolls when I was a kid. I don't remember being very thorough with them and making sure they got fed in my make-believe world. A lot of Barbie haircuts were given, though. I had a Tamagotchi as well, but I think that thing died really quick. They were hard to do!

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