A Quote by Mel Smith

I never met Barbara Cartland. But now that I'm working on her life, I wish I had. I think there was a lot of pathos in it and I'm intrigued by her. — © Mel Smith
I never met Barbara Cartland. But now that I'm working on her life, I wish I had. I think there was a lot of pathos in it and I'm intrigued by her.
Now that I think of it, she looked splendid. I wish I had met her somewhere else. I wish I had appreciated her as she deserved. I wish that everything had gone differently.
Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly.
The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.
Occasionally, on screen, Barbara [Stanwyck] had a wary, watchful quality about her that I've noticed in other people who had bad childhoods; they tend to keep an eye on life because they don't think it can be trusted. After her mother was killed by a streetcar, she had been raised in Brooklyn by her sisters, and from things she said, I believe she had been abused as a child. She had lived an entirely different life than mine, that's for sure, which is one reason I found her so fascinating. I think her early life was one reason she had such authenticity as an actress, and as a person.
I was lucky enough to make four pictures with Barbara. In the first I turned her in, in the second I killed her, in the third I left her for another woman, and in the fourth I pushed her over a waterfall. The one thing all these pictures had in common was that I fell in love with Barbara Stanwyck - and I did, too.
Working with Angela Bassett is by far the best. I've watched and admired her for years. I'm very intrigued by her work. She's so cool. I still call her 'Mom' when I see her.
Dad was a draughtsman; he's now retired. Mum was a nurse who spent a lot of her time in ER and oncology. She's such a compassionate, generous person. If I was meeting her on the worst day of my life, I'd be very grateful to have met her.
This person had arrived, he had illuminated her, he had ensorcelled her with notions of miracle and beauty, he had both understood and misunderstood her, he had married her, he had broken her heart, he had looked upon her with those sad and hopeless eyes, he had accepted his banishment, and now he was gone. What a stark and stunning thing was life- that such a cataclysm can enter and depart so quickly, and leave such wreckage behind!
IAGO: She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will and yet was never loud, Never lack'd gold and yet went never gay, Fled from her wish and yet said 'Now I may,' She that being anger'd, her revenge being nigh, Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly, She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod's head for the salmon's tail; She that could think and ne'er disclose her mind, See suitors following and not look behind, She was a wight, if ever such wight were,-- DESDEMONA: To do what? IAGO: To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.
Selfishly, perhaps, Catti-brie had determined that the assassin was her own business. He had unnerved her, had stripped away years of training and discipline and reduced her to the quivering semblance of a frightened child. But she was a young woman now, no more a girl. She had to personally respond to that emotional humiliation, or the scars from it would haunt her to her grave, forever paralyzing her along her path to discover her true potential in life.
I have never yet met a successful person who hasn't had to overcome either a little or a lot of adversity in his or her life. If life there is a lot of lumps and bumps... a lot of throttling up and a lot of throttling down.
But what Davenport had been born into had taken so much from her, leaving her with just the wickedest and the worst. Her father had given her life, and then taken every scrap of joy or freedom, and even now that he was dead, all he had left her with was a deep, abiding hatred for what she was.
When you find out you're working with someone like Jennifer Aniston, you're like, 'Whoa, what is my life right now? ' It kind of doesn't really seem real. I grew up watching 'Friends' and all her movies, and I was so excited to work with her. And then, I met her, and I was like, 'Oh. You're, like, a very relatable human being.'
I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader - I have seen everything from the sublime to the ridiculous by her bed, from Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard to Barbara Cartland and James Patterson) taking me to get my library card when I was four and not yet at school.
I bought Jayne Mansfield's mansion in L.A. after her death. I had met her in England and remembered her perfume. When I moved in, I could smell her, and I saw her apparition.
When you think in terms of public service, I heard so much about what Mother Theresa had done in her life. And I was fortunate enough to get a chance to meet her and talk to her a lot about what motivates her and what drives her. And that, to me, is a person that really is an extraordinary role model.
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