When a studio puts you under contract, its publicity department starts turning out news copy about you that you read with astonishment. You think, can this be me they’re talking about? They don’t really manufacture untruths, but they play up whatever makes interesting reading, and then a columnist adds his own little embellishments and another adds to that until there’s a whole body of so called ‘facts’ floating around — almost like another you — that simply isn’t real. It isn’t a lie, but it isn’t real, either.

In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people.

i was a woman. glamorous, sparkling, with eyes that shone, guarding secrets untold, lips that were petulant, pouting and bold with a body moulded to gentlemen's delight and pedicured toe-nails shining and bright. i patronized night clubs, danced until three, and hundreds of men were mad at me. then, in a panic my dream began to cool, i mashed out the cigarette and was late to school.