I hoped that Grace would be a little bit of the best of all of us: Scarlett's spirit, and my mother's strength, Marion's determination, and Michael's sly humor. I wasn't sure what I could give, not just yet. But I would know when I told her about the comet, years from now, I would know. And I would lean close to her ear, saying the words no one else could hear, explaining it all. The language of solace and comets, and the girls we all become, in the end.
I went in for an audition [for As Good As It Gets], but the audition was with James L. Brooks. I was the first girl in that morning, and there was a whole waiting room of girls waiting to read for it. So I did my audition, and he asked me to step outside. So I stepped outside, and when he asked me to come back in, he looked at me, and he said, "Well, I'm very excited to work with you on set." And I was, like, "What?" I thought it was a Hollywood blow-off.
Wanna rock you, girl, with a butterfly tunic. / No, I'm not gay, I'm just your emo enuch. / Gonna smile real shy, won't cop a feel, / 'cause I'm your virgin crush, your supersafe deal. / Let those other guys keep sexing. / You and me, we be texting / 'bout unicorns and rainbows and our perfect love. / Girl, we fit together like a hand in a glove. / Now I don't mean that nasty, tell your mum don't get mad. / I even wrote 'You're awesome' on your maxi pads.
After so many drive-in waitresses becoming movie stars, there has been this real drought, when along come class; somebody who actually went to school, can spell, maybe even plays the piano. She may be a wispy, thin little thing, but when you see that girl, you know you're really in the presence of something. In that league there's only ever been Garbo, and the other Hepburn, and maybe Bergman. It's a rare quality, but boy, do you know when you've found it.
Now every girl is expected to have: Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.
I drew laughing, high-breasted girls aquaplaning without a care in the world, as a result of being amply protected against such national evils as bleeding gums, facial blemishes, unsightly hairs, and faulty or inadequate life insurance. I drew housewives who, until they reached for the right soap flakes, laid themselves wide open to straggly hair, poor posture, unruly children, disaffected husbands, rough (but slender) hands, untidy (but enormous) kitchens.
Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.
I didn't tell anybody [had got a role at As Good As It Gets], because I was just going, "Well, that was the strangest audition..." And I just thought, "There's no way he gave me the job on the spot when there was a room full of other girls waiting to audition for it." But then I didn't hear anything for a couple of days, so I finally called my agents, and they're, like, "Oh, yeah, congratulations! We know Jim [L.Brooks] told you in the room that you got it."
When I have been travelling up and down on our boats, or about on my collecting tours, and reflected that every brutal, disgusting, mean, low-lived fellow I met, was allowed by our laws to become absolute despot of as many men, women and children, as he could cheat, steal, or gamble money enough to buy,-when I have seen such men in actual ownership of helpless children, of young girls and women,-I have been ready to curse my country, to curse the human race!
Crazy isn´t always what they say it is. It´s not always the old woman wearing sneakers and a skirt and a scarf, wandering around with a shopping cart, hollering at no one, nothing, tumbling through years in her head. No. Sometimes it is a girl wearing boots and jeans and a sweater, arms crossed in front of her, shivering, wandering through the streets at night, all night, murmuring to no one, nothing, tumbling through the strange unreal dimensions in her head.
Long ago, when I was a very young girl, I said that I wanted to go everywhere, see everything, taste everything. hear everything, touch everything, try everything before I died. There isn't anything you can name that a woman can do that I haven't done. I don't intend to stand by and be a spectator. I want to be right in there in the midst of it, right up to my nose - totally involved in the community, in the world, in the stream of history, in the human image.