I said, "I don't think I can give you that kind of emotion." And he [Hitchcock] sat there and said, "Ingrid, fake it!" Well, that was the best advice I've had in my whole life, because in all the years to come there were many directors who gave me what I thought were quite impossible instructions and many difficult things to do, and just when I was on the verge of starting to argue with them, I heard his voice coming to me through the air saying, "Ingrid, fake it!" It saved a lot of unpleasant situations and waste of time.

There are advantages to being a star though - you can always get a table in a full restaurant.

On acting to daughter Isabella Rossellini: Keep it simple. Make a blank face and the music and the story will fill it in.

I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with [Humphrey Bogart].

Never again! I can see no reason for marriage - ever at all. I've had it. Three times is enough.

Cancer victims who don't accept their fate, who don't learn to live with it, will only destroy what little time they have left.

I won't do this movie because I don't believe the love story," she told Selznick. "The heroine is an intellectual woman, and an intellectual woman simply can't fall in love so deeply.