Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In my day, when you called on a girl, her mother was always hollering down to see if she was still unraped, the maid would look in, her father would shuffle his feet in another room. Today the boy calls up, says, 'Meet you at the back door of Stern's.'
I love to cook and really enjoy cleaning my house. People always tease me about getting a maid. My girlfriend tells me that they are only $40 and will do everything. But that is my time to unwind, put my hair in a ponytail, throw on sweats, and be myself.
I am the least intimidating person. I think I would have done better in my career if I were a little more intimidating. Even the maid who comes to work for me once a week has found out that she can just trample over me... I'm a Cancer! We are not ferocious people.
I do have a fantasy piece of technology that would do my food shopping for me, and if you wanted to, you could probably employ a butler or a maid. But I'd like to have a fridge that restocks itself. I don't know what you'd call that - an automatic restocking pantry?
I feel that directors at times are like the janitors on the set. I am the secretary, I am the organizer, I am the maid, and I ask if they have eaten or rested. The best things are always out of your control. It's those moments that surpass the imagination that are thrilling.
I played several maids in my career. I was tired of the maid after 'Far From Heaven.' I said, no more maids. Until I realized how difficult it was to get a role other than a maid, sometimes, in Hollywood, and sometimes you have to choose your battles, for lack of a better term.
A show that I loved as a kid was 'Maid Marian And Her Merry Men'. It was a really strong female character making fun of the boys, an inversion of gender politics. But it was very funny, too. I always wanted to be one of the village people messing about in the mud and being stinky.
My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a maid and a stock clerk at K-Mart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet they were successful. Because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them.
I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence.
I remember when I was very young, I had a fever - a long rheumatic fever in bed for four months. And in the days, I stayed alone with the maid. I only had my father's books with me. They were fantasy books about ghosts, and also books by Edgar Allen Poe that made a forever impression on me.
Eliza was my first name for two reasons. My dad was reading 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' which features the maid Eliza in it, when I was born. Then there was Eliza Doolittle from 'My Fair Lady' and 'Pygmalion.' My mum always loved the name, and I got called Eliza Doolittle a lot, so it stuck, basically.
There was years when my father didn't even make a hundred grand - or barely made a hundred grand - and sure, we had a maid, but she only came twice a week. What do you think happened the other five days? You think those dishes washed themselves? You think those clothes got themselves in the hamper?
I loved all the other movies, and I loved all the other movie stars, but I was very aware of the fact that I didn't look like Marilyn Monroe - although I still wanted to be Marilyn Monroe. Then Josephine Baker popped up, and she wasn't the maid - she was the star of the show. To me, it was mind-blowing.
If I can iron out my accent, it opens up another world of possible jobs. Whereas if you have that very strong European accent, it leaves you always being cast as the Hungarian maid or the stripper or whatever. I have voice lessons, and my coach has given me different tongue-twisters to rehearse at home.
Because I sometimes shopped in Waitrose, I thought I was actually quite posh. I've realised that I'm basically a scullery maid. Even the middle-class people who I meet in parliament, people who live in London - which I think is remarkable because how can anybody afford to live there - seem much, much more middle class than me.
'Hollywood maids' are so idiotic. They grin at everything. I told Norman Lear I didn't want to play a maid because of that 'hee-hee/grin-grin' attitude, and he said, 'Who said I wanted that?' He told me he wanted two strong women that are the black and white of the same coin. I said, 'Oh, well - in that case, I'll be right there!'
I spent a lot of my twenties wanting a maid, really. I thought I wanted a relationship, but I just wanted somebody to fix and nurse me, and I'd take her hostage for six months. When you're 23, 24, you want to be in a relationship because they look brilliant - you've heard all the songs about it and seen all the movies and it looks great.
My parents were working class folks. My dad was a bartender for most of his life, my mom was a maid and a cashier and a stock clerk at WalMart. We were not people of financial means in terms of significant financial means. I always told them, 'I didn't always have what I wanted. I always had what I needed.' My parents always provided that.
Women are smarter by basic instinct and by what we have to do to multitask at home and at work. My mother did that 50 years ago, but it wasn't called multitasking or stress back then. She had a job, two kids and the meals to make with no cook or maid. My father would come home every day and expect lunch. He was a nice guy, but he was clueless!
