Lauren Bacall

For my peculiar face, I look best when I look as though I'm not wearing make-up.

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.

I was this kid, and I was scared to death of all these pros around me... My head would shake, and my hands would shake, and I discovered if I kept my head down and looked up, my head would not shake, so I started to do that when I could, when it was appropriate in a scene.

When everything happens to you when you're so young, you're very lucky, but by the same token, you're never going to have that same feeling again. The first time anything happens to you - your first love, your first success - the second one is never the same.

I wasn't brought up as a society girl to go to balls and be a debutante and marry the social set and money and go to parties. No one in my family lived like that. And I never wanted to live like that. I was brought up to believe in work. I always wanted a career. Always.

Well, the people I've known I must say are extraordinary. When I think about some of them, I can't believe that I knew them all. And I think the reason I knew most of them at the beginning was because they were of Bogie's generation, 25 years my senior, not mine. But they were the most talented people of all.

I'm not tough, and I never have been. I suppose over the years I've built up kind of a veneer to protect myself because I have functioned on my own for a long, long time, and I have never had a lot of flunkies preceding me to clear the way.

I used to tremble from nerves so badly that the only way I could hold my head steady was to lower my chin practically to my chest and look up at Bogie. That was the beginning of The Look.

Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a - I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him. I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man.

He named me. He liked the sound of it. And I said, well, all right. I felt a little odd about it. I don't understand all that name changing business anyway... No, he felt that Lauren Bacall was better sounding than Betty Bacall. He had a vision of his own. He was a svengali. He wanted to mold me. He wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart got involved.

I find that through the sad times, work is what made my continuing, not breaking down, possible. In work, I was always someone else and I subconsciously reveled in that.

I was always a little unsteady in my self-belief. Then there was the Jewish thing. I love being Jewish, I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.

It was Howard Hawks who changed my life.

I am not a has-been. I am a will be.

After the age of 30 in the movie profession, you're pretty well over as far as the casting people are concerned.

The big rule is that you must never get mixed up with a married man - never even look sideways at another woman's fella. Boy, I really was terrific at obeying that rule, wasn't I?

I fairly often have thought how lucky I was. I knew everybody because I was married to Bogie, and that 25-year difference was the most fantastic thing for me to have in my life.