Katharine Hepburn delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B.

Exasperated Film Director, to Audrey Hepburn
You're impossible!
Hepburn
No, I'm not, I really happened...

…I have not even been nominated for one. But it doesn’t affect me any more. This is the great thing about getting old: things that preoccupied you when you were young cease to preoccupy you. I would have loved to have had one Oscar. Well, too bad. I have six sheep, two dogs, two children.

That's absolutely one of my most favorite movies, for so many reasons. I fought for that part; I wanted it badly. I took a lower salary, I did everything. Grace Kelly said, "I'll never forgive you for playing that part. It was written for me". She [Kelly] got the prince [Rainier], I got the part.

I remember the casting session that I had where I was a break dancer, having this punk hair cut. They rejected me and I became really disillusioned with the business and said well this is what it's all about, and I haven't even got in to read a line. He said don't worry, some day we're going to get you back into this and it's going to happen for you, which I kind of took to heart. It was one of those situations where I was lucky and fortunate enough to be at the right places at the right time. All of a sudden I was on the set of Growing Pains and got this audition for This Boy's Life and was able to jump into the feature film world. It's really been just simply the fact that I'd been able to work, you know what I mean? I would probably still be trying to be an actor even if I was out of work, but I would probably become a little disillusioned at some point and move on to other things. But it's the one thing that I know that I love.

(On her work in Keep Your Powder Dry) I didn't want to do it, but they said if I did it they would give me Undercurrent with Robert Taylor. Then they gave Undercurrent to Katharine Hepburn, so I left MGM.

I could understand if they picked Katharine Hepburn, but of course she wouldn't do it. But when they asked me, I thought at first it was a mistake. I thought they got me mixed up with Bette Davis. Attention embarrasses me. I don't like to be on display. I was always an extrovert in my work, but when it comes time to be myself I'll take a powder every time.

There must be something wrong with those people who think Audrey Hepburn doesn’t perspire, hiccup or sneeze, because they know that’s not true. I n fact, I hiccup more than most.

I don't think much of most of the films I made, but being a movie star was something I liked very much.

There was a wonderful cast for 'Alice'. Stanley Brett, 's brother, played the ; Tom Graves, brother of , played the and ; Will Bishop, himself, was the First Lobster and the Golliwog; and was played by the beautiful . The rest of the cast were: as the and ; Florrie Arnold as the ; Rita Leggerio as the ; Harry Ulph as the and the ; as the Duchess and the ; Euphan Maclaren as the Cook; Marjorie West as the ; as the Dormouse; Margaret Fraser as the Second Lobster; Alice Dubarri as the First Fairy and the Rose; Julian Cross as the and the ; Florence Lloyd as the and the ; Harold Borrett as the and the . took the parts of the Executioner, the , and ; Carmen Sylva, the Lily; Dorrit MacLaxen, the Red Knight; Leslie Bilbe, the Lion; John Hobbs, the Unicorn; Tom Jones, the Leg of Mutton; Ethel Evans, the Plum Pudding.
In Act I, I emerged from a large oyster shell, dressed as a little sailor boy, and danced a hornpipe. This seemed to me slightly incongruous, as I was supposed to be the First Oyster; but nobody minded.

But as he also points out, time teaches you that fame is relative. In 1983, [Robert] Lindsay starred as Edmund in a Granada TV version of King Lear. "Larry Olivier, who was very poorly at the time, was Lear." he says. "And there we were in makeup. At Granada, there was this huge makeup trailer. At one end there was Larry in his crown, and sitting down the other end was Doris Speed, who played Annie Walker in Coronation Street." At a certain moment, Olivier rose from his seat – in Lindsay’s memory, it was a throne – and made his way slowly down to Speed. The trailer was silent. Everyone was agog. "He stood behind her, and he leaned into her mirror," says Lindsay. "And then he said [cue a pitch-perfect impression of Olivier]: 'My darling, on behalf of the theatrical profession, I'd like to congratulate you on a performance that has given such heart to the nation. It's real, it's humorous, and we love you so much. Congratulations, my darling, and thank you." Olivier then made his way back to his own seat, at which point Doris Speed looked up at her makeup artist and said: 'Who’s that?'"

I began as an actor and I will end as one. I’m not going to direct movies my whole life. It’s just too much. I want to write myself parts as generous as Anne Dorval's, or the kid in Mommy or Antoine in It's Only the End of the World! I’ve benched myself for so long. But I can’t seem to give myself these roles. People would call me ‘narcissistic’ again. That's their favourite word for me. But I want to do that in the future. Acting is a passion for me, in all its possible forms. It’s a passion, really a passion!

The sun beats down and you pace, you pace and you pace. Your mind flies free and you see yourself as an actor, condemned to a treadmill wherein men and women conspire to breathe life into a screenplay that allegedly depicts life as it was in the old wild West. You see yourself coming awake any one of a thousand mornings between the spring of 1954, and that of 1958—alone in a double bed in a big white house deep in suburban Sherman Oaks, not far from Hollywood. The windows are open wide, and beyond these is the backyard swimming pool inert and green, within a picket fence. You turn and gaze at a pair of desks not far from the double bed. This is your private office, the place that shelters your fondest hopes: these desks so neat, patiently waiting for the day that never comes, the day you'll sit down at last and begin to write. Why did you never write? Why, instead, did you grovel along, through the endless months and years, as a motion‑picture actor? What held you to it, to something you so vehemently professed to despise? Could it be that you secretly liked it — that the big dough and the big house and the high life meant more than the aura you spun for those around you to see? Hayden's wild," they said. "He's kind of nuts — but you've got to hand it to him. He doesn't give a damn about the loot or the stardom or things like that — something to do with his seafaring, or maybe what he went through in the war . . ." Sure you liked it, part of it at least. The latitude this life gave you, the opportunity to pose perhaps; the chance to indulge in talk about “convictions — values — basic principles.” Maybe what kept you from writing was the fact that you knew it was tough. Maybe what held you to to acting was the fact that you couldn't lose — not really lose, because you could not be considered a failure if you had not set out to succeed... and you made it quite plain that you didn't give a damn. And yet, you did hate it. Perhaps you were weak, that's all. You hated it because you knew you were capable of far more. You hated the role of an actor because, in the final analysis. an actor is only a pawn — brilliant sometimes, rare and talented, capable of bringing pleasure and even inspiration to others, but no less a pawn for that: a man who at best expresses the yearnings and actions of others. Could it be that you thought too much of yourself — that you could not accept sublimating yourself to a mold conceived by others, anyone else on earth?

I don't know how this will end. All I know is Nanhoï's love. My son is my life. I believe in the magic of this love. He is the embodiment of life to me. The embodiment of beauty. Through him I'll find redemption and salvation. Then the wound in my soul - the wound I thought would never scar over - will stop bleeding. I thought I would have to tear it open once it began to heal. Back then, when I felt I couldn't stop being what is called an actor, when I told myself I was only doing it for the money and that it could be worse. Now, today, I'd rather be poor, but without nightmares and without the torture. If only I could! I wish I'd never been an actor! I wish I'd never had success! I'd rather have been a streetwalker, selling my body, than selling my tears and my laughter, my grief and joy.