Michelle Pfeiffer quotes:

Ultimately, I believe the only secret to a happy marriage is choosing the right person. Life is a series of choices, right?

I act for free, but I demand a huge salary as compensation for all the annoyance of being a public personality. In that sense, I earn every dime I make.

Like all parents, my husband and I just do the best we can, hold our breath and hope we've set aside enough money for our kid's therapy.

I've never met a person who has more integrity than my husband. I respect that. There's his humor and intelligence, too, and he's really cute, all those things - but if you don't respect your partner, you'll get sick of him.

My favorite food in the world is Mexican food. I'm not a dessert person. I'm more of a crunchy, salty girl. I could live on chips and salsa. I would take a Mexican meal over some fancy French cuisine anytime.

For me, getting comfortable with being famous was hard - that whole side of it, the loss of anonymity, the loss of privacy. Giving up that part of your life and not having control of it.

Just standing around looking beautiful is so boring.

Everybody is vulnerable to being in relationships where they get fooled. I'm no different. It's just human nature.

Being a parent is the hardest thing in the world... the psychological toll it takes on you because these lives are in your hands. I take it very seriously.

The value of a good education has never left me.

I said, going into acting, 'I'm never moving to L.A.,' because it scared me. But there was no way you could build an acting career in Orange County.

I do portraits. I usually do live models in a class environment, but I've been painting at home more. I really love the human form, and I love faces. I've tried to do landscapes a few times.

I relax by taking my bicycle apart and putting it back together again.

I look like a duck. It's the way my mouth curls up, or my nose tilts up. I should have played Howard the Duck.

It's simple. Eat well, exercise and get lots of sleep but make sure you indulge occasionally. At my age , I think , what the hell , and eat a Krispy Kreme doughnut !

I was kind of surprised to learn how controlling I am. I never thought of myself in that way. I think the root of the control issues is usually fear, because you want to know what's going to be happening at any given moment.

I was considered the black sheep of the family, neighbours didn't want their kids playing with me.

Somewhere along the line I made the switch and was able to look at the bight side rather than the dark side all the time. Now I look at everything I have and think how lucky I am.

First of all, plain and simple, you have no real idea of what it means to be famous until you become famous. It's a double-edged sword. Obviously there are a lot of amazing things about fame, but there are also a lot of challenging things about it.

There is no question that the older you get, the fewer good roles there are.

You know, when I am working, I take really, really good care of myself. I eat really well, and I exercise, and again, I have this team of people pulling me together every day.

You know, the more you can meet people from different walks of life, the better it is for you. I think the more you can create situations and experiences that give you new perspective, the better.

It takes years for me to trust; I know that about myself. A lot of it is because I am so private, and so reluctant to make myself vulnerable.

People make a lot of jokes about the empty nest. Let me tell you, it is no laughing matter. It is really hard.

I worked so hard for so long - I did a lot of movies. I also worked a lot when my kids were smaller, before they were in school.

Somewhere along the line I made the switch and was able to look at the bright side rather than the dark sida all the time. Now I look at everything I have and think how lucky I am.

It's harder to live the way I live. There are certain places I like to shop and eat where I simply don't go. The paparazzi follow you.

One thing that's great about having kids, especially given my career, is that it forces you out of your narcissism. I mean, I'm in a career where my product is me. So it was nice to have something, someone, come along and take the focus off me. I really needed to give myself some distractions from myself.

Acting's an odd profession for a young person; it's so extreme. You work, and the conditions are tough and the process is so immersive, and then it stops, and then there's nothing. So you have to find ways of making you feel productive when you're not actually producing anything. For a young person, that's really challenging.

Just when you think you've got your kids figured out, they change on you. For somebody who's controlling, you can't control it. Of course, I don't think I'm controlling, but that's what I've been told!

There's always an imbalance with actors and actresses in the industry. And I think because there are just fewer movies overall being made, it's that trickle down effect.

I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker.... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table.

I don't know if it's naivete or just narcissism, but I start out with this notion that I can do anything. It's not until I get into it that I realize what I've thrown myself into, and then I will do anything not to humiliate myself. And that, I think, is the secret to my success.

My grandmother raised five children during the Depression by herself. At 50, she threw her sewing machine into the back of a pickup truck and drove from North Dakota to California. She was a real survivor, so that's my stock. That's how I want my kids to be too.

I'm a perfectionist, so I can drive myself mad - and other people, too. At the same time, I think that's one of the reasons I'm successful. Because I really care about what I do.

I say really stupid things sometimes. When I go back and watch some of my old interviews from when I was younger, I just cringe.

I do think that, at one time, being an actress was the equivalent almost of being a prostitute. It garnered roughly the same respect. That's changed a lot, thank goodness.

I've been painting off and on since I was in sixth grade. I don't paint when I'm acting - I'm not really able to split my focus that way. I do it intensely when I'm doing it, but I'm reluctant to take myself too seriously as a painter because that would mean there would be pressure to be better than I am.

I'm a Taurus. To the bone.

And I'm a really happy person, I enjoy life. I think you see that on people. I think there's nothing more aging than misery.

The whole celebrity thing never is normal and I think the fuller your life is, the more you are able to just kind of call a truce with it on a good day.

I used to smoke two packs a day and I just hate being a nonsmoker... but I will never consider myself a nonsmoker because I always find smokers the most interesting people at the table.

I feel less pressure to dress youthfully. I'm 50 and everyone knows I'm 50 - who are you kidding? Jeans are my uniform. I have about 15 pairs.

This is the thing I've learned, after a lot of couch time: There are always red flags. You need to look for those red flags along the way so you don't continue to make the same mistakes with another person.

I do find comedy difficult. I don't know why. Maybe I think about it too much. There's a tremendous amount of pressure to be funny.

[De Niro]'s a classic example of somebody who is iconic and who sort of effortlessly puts actors at ease the moment you meet him. I think it's also just something that he innately does with people.

Acting is kind of brutal.

Actually, I think that turning 29 was more difficult, because once I turned 29, I anticipated 30 for the whole year, so by the time 30 came around it really wasn't that bad.

Being from Orange County is in a lot ways very much like being from the Midwest.

Even though I don't feel I need approval, it's still important to me to give a good performance. I'm hard on myself.

Every time I set up an interview, I say, "That's it, this is my last one. I'll do this because I committed to doing it, but I'm never doing another one."

Honestly, depending on what stage I'm at in my life, my opinion on plastic surgery changes. I've never been against plastic surgery - I'm against bad plastic surgery. I'm against the overuse of plastic surgery.

I am basically very private, and I'm really nervous about doing publicity.

I can't imagine myself blowing up supermarkets!

I decided I needed something that I could feel as passionate about as acting, and something in which I could completely lose myself. I started painting, and I'm still doing it.

I do sometimes feel like the paparazzi are really what ran me out of L.A. They're just giving everyone a bad name.

I don't believe men want women to have grotesque plastic surgery or be undernourished and bony. All the plastic surgery in the world can't stop you getting older.

I don't really know what Hollywood is. I've never really known.

I don't think it's easy for women to watch themselves age. And I think it's obviously doubly hard to grow older when you are a public figure and you constantly have to see your image all the time, and people are constantly pointing it out.

I find the less you focus on your flaws, the better off you are. Be yourself and be glad of who you are.

I guess I do a really good job at covering.

I guess I sort of just feel like I am lucky.

I have days when I just feel I look like a dog.

I know that I want to wait for something that I really feel great about.

I like being prepared. When things are going on and I have to learn my lines at the last minute, I'm never quite secure enough to allow it to be spontaneous. So the more prepared I am, the more I'm able to kind of let it go . . .

I like understanding what's underneath, what's really motivating people. When I was younger, I wanted to be a psychiatrist, so I think it has to do with that.

I liked getting up at 4 in the morning, driving on the freeway, and going in and stocking shelves and laughing with the stock clerks.

I never wanted to have to take a job because I didn't have any money.

I probably would like to do more than I do, because I love working, but I can't work more than I work because I have to do some facetime with the family, and the work that I do is just all-encompassing.

I still look like a duck.

I still think people will find out that I'm really not very talented. I'm really not very good. It's all been a big sham.

I think all actors have a sadomasochistic streak, because acting is kind of brutal, you know.

I think that I am a compulsive person, but now I'm learning to put those compulsions into healthy things.

I think there is a major difference between actors and actresses. All of the men I've worked with have been really difficult, whereas the women have always been extremely cooperative. I began thinking about that, and I think it comes down to a question of comfort with vanity.

I used to do drugs in high school. I've been living in L.A. for almost 10 years, and shortly after I arrived I cleaned up pretty much. Stuff goes on on the set, stuff goes on at parties.

I used to stay up very late at night, much later than I probably should have for such a youngster, and I used to watch very old black-and-white movies with, you know, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but I remember watching them thinking 'I could do that'... Even though I wasn't inclined at all to actually become an actress. I mean, that wasn't something that was... in the stars for me, no pun intended.

I went to court-reporting school to study stenotyping. After awhile, whenever anybody spoke, in my mind my fingers would be punching it out. Even two years after I quit, my mind still did that.

I would speak up if I see someone being rude to someone.

I'd been taking singing lessons and I had taken dance, because I loved to dance, but I had never considered myself a professional at all.

If I do a move I don't like, I don't want to get so upset with myself.

If I really want to do something, I'll go in and do whatever the director feels that he needs me to do.

If you think hitting 40 is liberating, wait until you hit 50; and I was surprised at how liberating it was. The anticipation of something is always much worse than the reality.

If you're working on something that isn't very demanding, isn't very fulfilling, then you have all this energy to burn, and you can go crazy.

I'm afraid to be alone, I'm afraid not to be alone. I'm afraid of what I am, what I'm not, what I might become, what I might never become. I don't want to stay at my job for the rest of my life, but I'm afraid to leave. And I'm just tired, you know? I'm just so tired of being afraid.

I'm always amazed at how consistent people find me and my behavior, when in fact I do feel different all the time.

I'm good at disguising my feelings.

It never occurs to me that I'd be intimidating to anybody. Maybe I should consider that...

It's fun to kick ass and show that other dark side of yourself as well.

I've always had a very extreme personality, which gets me into major trouble, I'm always all or nothing, and I don't know the world "balance." I'm desperately trying to learn it because I think as you get older it becomes very important.

I've been working since I was 14, and my father, being very conservative, has always been strict about my having a savings account.

I've worked with very few actors who have been at all difficult.

Love humiliates you. Hatred cradles you.

Maybe I haven't done enough movies, but haven't found that men are more difficult than women.

Men do not take to vanity, because they are taught at an early age that it is wrong to be vain.

Most people in the world have seen more of me on-screen than my kids have.

My father was very strict, but mostly I just didn't know how to behave on a date.

My kids would probably say that I'm too strict. They probably would say that, and I try not to be, but I'm probably more on the conservative end of that. At the same time, I know full well that ultimately I don't really have control over them.

My walk is consistently made fun of.

One of the things I love most about acting is just disappearing in the role, as much as I can. I think that's one of the things that intrigued me about it.

People who are rude to waiters... I don't like that sort of thing. People who take cuts in line... it doesn't fly!

Rudeness is what gets to me. Yeah. That one does get to me, I have to say.

There are certain scenes you do in a movie that are like catching a wave, and you leave work feeling elated - almost as though you've purged something. That's rare, but you do live for those moments.

There have been people in my life who have told me I have to put myself out there more. But it's so hard for me to do that.

Well, I'm very stubborn. I think I have common sense; I'm probably at times a bit tunnel-visioned, but I'm strong.

When I first started out, I said to myself, if this doesn't happen there will be something else that I can do. That seemed possible because I knew how to do so many different kinds of jobs.

When I go to work and when I'm in the public eye, I take much better care of myself. Because when I'm not working, I do indulge more.

When I was very young I never thought I was attractive, because I was a tomboy and I was always the biggest girl in the class.

When I wasn't working I didn't know what to do with myself and sort of didn't exist, in a way, when I wasn't working, so I was like two different people. I am not like that anymore.

When you're young and have a dream, it's pretty simplistic. You don't think about or have any way of knowing everything it can be, and anticipate that.

Where I came from, the idea of going into show business was just ridiculous; in fact I didn't tell anybody because I knew people would laugh at me. So I sort of snuck around and got some pictures and got a resume together and, of course, lied and said I did all kinds of things I didn't do.

Women are brought up to think it's acceptable to pay attention to their faces. Men translate their discomfort into their behavior.

You can have it all, but you can't do it all.

You can't have a favourite meal, like you can't have a favourite movie or a favourite book or a favourite child.

You have a choice. It may not be a choice you like, but it is still a choice.

You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to play a bag lady.

You've got each other's back. I think if everyone shows up with that attitude, then everybody has a great time, and I think the work is better as well.

I even had breasts that had mechanisms that could make them droop. It was a shock in the beginning. Talk about special effects!

It's fun to explore areas that are taboo that you're not allowed to in real life as an actor.