Anne Bancroft Quotes

Anna Maria Louisa Italiano , known professionally as Anne Bancroft, was an American actress, director, screenwriter and singer associated with the method acting school, having studied under Lee Strasberg. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft was acknowledged for her work in film, theatre and television. She won one Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards, and several other awards and nominations.

After her film debut in Don't Bother to Knock and a string of supporting film roles during the 1950s, she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her lead role in The Miracle Worker as the teacher of teenage Helen Keller, reprising her role in the Broadway stage play. She won both an Oscar for her work in the film, and a Tony for the same role in the play. On Broadway in 1965, she played a medieval nun obsessed with a priest in John Whiting's play The Devils, based on the Aldous Huxley novel The Devils of Loudun. She was perhaps best known as the seductress, Mrs. Robinson, in The Graduate , a role that she later stated had come to overshadow her other work.

Bancroft received several other Oscar nominations and continued in lead roles until the late 1980s. She played a ballet dancer in The Turning Point , and in Agnes of God , she played the mother superior of a convent who clashes with a psychiatrist played by Jane Fonda over dealings with a troubled young novice nun played by Meg Tilly. In 1987, she starred with Anthony Hopkins in 84 Charing Cross Road. She appeared in several movies directed or produced by her second husband, comedian Mel Brooks, including the award-winning drama The Elephant Man as well as comedies To Be or Not to Be and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.

In the 1990s she returned to supporting roles in films, but continued to play lead roles in television films. She received Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone , as well as an Emmy nomination for 2001's Haven.

✵ 17. September 1931 – 6. June 2005
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Famous Anne Bancroft Quotes

“I identified with both women. But Emma had a stronger message for the women I want to speak to now— women who work. I wanted to tell them that choosing to work doesn't make them oddballs and isn't antisocial.”

On her decision to play Emma, in The Turning Point (1977). Interview People magazine, quoted in "Anne Bancroft" http://archive.salon.com/people/bc/2001/09/18/anne_bancroft/index2.html at Salon.com (18 September 2001).

“I was at a point where I was ready to say I am what I am because of what I am and if you like me I'm grateful, and if you don't, what am I going to do about it?”

Interview on her role in the Broadway play "Two for the Seesaw". The New York Times (1958).

“I don't quite jump for joy, but I am awfully glad to see him.”

On her husband Mel Brooks Associated Press interview (1997).

“I understand the world… I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet.”

Interview (2003).
Context: I am quite surprised, that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet.

Anne Bancroft Quotes

“He understands not only with his brain but with his heart.”

On her husband Mel Brooks Associated Press interview (1997).
Context: He understands not only with his brain but with his heart. And that might be called love. Not quite sure, but maybe that's the key.

“If you marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons, then no matter how hard you work, it's never going to work, because then you have to completely change yourself, completely change them, completely — by that time, you're both dead.”

On successful marriage. Associated Press interview (1997).
Context: First of all, you have to marry the right person. If you marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons, then no matter how hard you work, it's never going to work, because then you have to completely change yourself, completely change them, completely — by that time, you're both dead. So I think you have to marry for the right reasons, and marry the right person.

“To this day, when men meet me, there's always that movie in the back of their mind.”

On The Graduate, " Anne Bancroft Finds Her Own Way Back http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/theater/theater-anne-bancroft-finds-her-own-way-back.html?pagewanted=2", interview with Peter Marks in the New York Times (17 February 2002).

“I am quite surprised, that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker.”

We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet.
Interview (2003).

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