Elizabeth Taylor Quotations

I left home as soon as I could, when I was 18. I thought I was in love and got married - the press called it Prince Charming and Cinderella. He was a Hilton so I was the poor little Cinderella. And when I got a divorce nine months later I never told the court why, but he was cruel.

I've always sung in the shower. Now I make the stage a mental shower in order not to get too uptight and enjoy it.

On the film where I didn't get along with the director, I just decided to not speak to him.

It's amazing the gymnastics you can do when you don't want to do something. How you can force yourself against all the forces of nature. I threw myself backward.

To me, acting is a matter of absolute concentration. You can laugh and giggle with your friends up to the minute the director says, "Action!" Then you snap your mind into shape and into the character that you're playing and relate to the people that you're acting with and forget everybody else that you've been joking with.

Acting is fun. It's not my whole life. It's not my entire being. It's secondary to my life. My life is primary. I'm running in the primary, as you know.

I've never had an acting lesson. I've never been given techniques. Everything I've done is invented. I just sort of found out [how to do it].

I have been supremely lucky in my life in that I have known great love, and of course I am the temporary custodian of some incredible and beautiful things.

I hate the idea of always having to interpret other people's ideas and thoughts and words, because I'm very independent and, I guess, a free thinker.

I have never wanted to be a queen! Cleopatra was a role, and I am an actor, so it was fun to play one, but it's not real.