Famous show business insults

An Andy Warhol Marilyn painting with a pie splatted over her face to symbolise show business insults.

There are no insults like show business insults. Built on illusion, studied with envy and fuelled by lust, show biz is just asking for it. Prick an ego inflated to fill the screen and it bursts with a satisfying bang.

Show business insults about stars

Her body has gone to her head.

Barbara Stanwyck on Marilyn Monroe

Nowadays Mitchum doesn’t so much act as point his suit at people.

Russell Davies on Robert Mitchum

I gave up being serious about making pictures about the time I made a film with Greer Garson and she took 125 takes to say no.

Robert Mitchum

Edward Woodward — his name sounds like a fart in the bath.

Noel Coward

There is not enough money in Hollywood to lure me into making another movie with Joan Crawford. And I like money.

Sterling Hayden

You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good … Joan Crawford is dead. Good.

Bette Davis

She was divinely, hysterically, insanely malevolent.

Bette Davis on Theda Bara

Working with Julie Andrews is like being hit over the head with a Valentine card.

Christopher Plummer

It’s like kissing Hitler.

Tony Curtis on kissing Marilyn Monroe

A swaggering, tough little slut.

Louise Brooks on Shirley Temple

It’s a new low for actresses when you have to wonder what is between her ears instead of her legs.

Katharine Hepburn on Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct

Paul Newman has the attention span of a bolt of lightning.

Robert Redford

Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.

Studio staffer on Fred Astaire

Show business quotes about Hollywood

Hollywood’s a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.

Marilyn Monroe

Hollywood: They only know one word of more than one syllable here, and that is “fillum”.

Louis Sherwin

Hollywood is a sewer with service from the Ritz Carlton.

Wilson Mizner

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.

Fred Allen

A place where they shoot too many pictures and not enough actors.

Walter Winchell on Hollywood

Hollywood is a place where your best friend will plunge a knife in your back and then call the police to tell them that you are carrying a concealed weapon.

George Frazier

Of all the Christbitten places in the two hemispheres, this is the last curly kink in the pig’s tail.

Stephen Vincent Benét on Hollywood

You can’t find any true closeness in Hollywood, because everybody does the fake closeness so well.

Carrie Fisher

Show business quotes about actors and acting

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that you’ve got it made.

George Burns

You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.

Michael Wilding

I deny that I have ever said actors are cattle. What I said was: “Actors should be treated like cattle.”

Alfred Hitchcock

Actors are crap.

John Ford

Insults about studio bosses and producers

Studio heads have foreheads by dint of electrolysis.

S.J. Perelman

You had to stand in line to hate him.

Hedda Hopper on Harry Cohn

Well, it only proves what they always say — give the public something they want to see and they’ll come out for it.

Red Skelton on the crowd attending the funeral of Harry Cohn

The reason so many people turned up for his funeral is that they wanted to make sure he was dead.

Samuel Goldwyn on Louis B. Mayer

I think that’s what they call professional courtesy.

Herman Mankiewicz on hearing that a Hollywood agent had survived a swim in shark-infested waters

I had a great deal of say…but the producer didn’t have a great deal of listen.

Douglas Adams on the TV production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This film wasn’t released — it escaped.

Robert Altman on M*A*S*H

Show business insults about writers

In Hollywood, writers are considered only the first drafts of human beings.

Frank Deford

Schmucks with Underwoods.

Jack Warner on screenwriters

Actor: I thought your book was wonderful. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. By the way, who wrote it for you?

Ilka Chase: I’m so glad you liked it. By the way, who read it to you?

Ilka Chase

Show business insults about directors

The four foot Pole you wouldn’t want to touch with a ten foot pole.

Kenneth Tynan on Roman Polanksi

A classic two-hander, directed by a proper one-hander.

Robbie Collin on Kenneth Branagh’s Sleuth

Insults about actors’ looks

Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a condom full of walnuts.

Clive James

A testicle with legs.

Pauline Kael on Bob Hoskins

Poor little man. They made him of lemon Jell-O and there he is.

Adela Rogers St John on Robert Redford

She looks like she combs her hair with an egg beater.

Louella Parsons on Joan Collins

A cross between an aardvark and an albino rat.

John Simon on Barbra Streisand

Insults about acting technique

An acting style that is really a nervous breakdown in slow motion.

John Simon on Diane Keaton

A thespian technique picked up from someone who once worked with somebody who knew Lee Strassberg’s sister.

Clive James on William Shatner playing Captain Kirk in Star Trek

Miss Davies has two expressions — joy and indigestion.

Dorothy Parker on Marion Davies

Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater.

Bette Davis on Jayne Mansfield

Perry gave his usual impersonation of a man who has simultaneously been told to say “Cheese” and shot in the back with a poisoned arrow.

Clive James on Perry Como

A bargain basement Bette Davis, whose lightest touch as a comedienne could stun a horse.

Time on Susan Hayward

Actors insulting themselves

I look like a duck.

Michelle Pfeiffer

Through it all, I have remained consistently and nauseatingly adorable. In fact, I have been known to cause diabetes in some people.

Meg Ryan

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.

Tallulah Bankhead

My movies were the kind they show in prisons and airplanes, because nobody can leave.

Burt Reynolds

He brought to every one of his roles this quality of needing the money.

Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry on Hugh Laurie

I took a personal inventory of all my healthy body parts for which I am grateful: Straight Greek eyebrows. They start at the hairline at my temple and, left unchecked, will grow straight across my face and onto yours.

Tina Fey

Telling me to relax or smile when I’m angry is like bringing a birthday cake into an ape sanctuary. You’re just asking to get your nose and genitals bitten off.

Amy Poehler

Insults about martial arts

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.

Dave Barry

So portly that his martial arts skills are reminiscent of a hippopotamus irritably flicking off flies with its ears.

Chris Tookey on Steven Seagal

Five nice things to say about Steven Seagal: (1) He has very good posture. (2) His ponytail is neatly trimmed. (3) While his acting repertoire is limited, he does a brow furrow Jeremy Irons would kill for. (4) When doing martial-arts manoeuvres, he does not emit chicken-like sounds, as Bruce Lee did. (5)…Maybe there are only four.

Ralph Novak

Show business quotes about ageing

I’m sorry, Greer, I’m ten years older.

Cameraman Joe Ruttenberg’s response when Greer Garson complained he didn’t photograph her as well as he used to

Actress: I dread the thought of 45.

Rosalind Russell: Why, what happened to you then, dear?

Rosalind Russell

Phyllis Diller had so many face-lifts there’s nothing left in her shoes.

Bob Hope

Insults about actors who aren’t all there

She’s a vacuum with nipples.

Otto Preminger on Marilyn Monroe

She’s good at playing abstract confusion in the same way a midget is good at being short.

Clive James on Marilyn Monroe

A face unclouded by thought.

Lillian Hellman on Norma Shearer

When she’s called upon to project any emotion more strenuous than ‘blonde’, it’s as though a wire has snapped somewhere.

Mike McCahill on Jessica Simpson

He is the celluloid equivalent of Rohypnol: a deadening whiff of pure boredom that deprives you of the power to think, speak or move your limbs. It wears off after a few hours, leaving you face down in a stagnant pool of vanilla Coke.

Peter Bradshaw on Matthew McConaughey

Maybe it’s the hair. Maybe it’s the teeth. Maybe it’s the intellect. No, it’s the hair.

Tom Shales on Farrah Fawcett

Sometimes when you look into his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving.

David Letterman on Andy Kaufman

Try interviewing her sometime. It’s like talking to a window.

Bryant Gumbel on Jerry Hall

If you say “Hiya, Clark, how are you?” he’s stuck for an answer.

Ava Gardner on Clark Gable

She turned down the role of Helen Keller because she couldn’t remember the lines.

Joan Rivers on Bo Derek

Bo Derek has no concept of Roman numerals. She thinks we just fought World War Eleven.

Joan Rivers

Insults about television

I don’t watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.

Stephen Fry

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go into the library and read a good book.

Groucho Marx

Television — a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.

Ernie Kovacs

Reality TV is the museum of social decay.

Gary Oldman

The only moving thing about the TV show Neighbours is the scenery.

Victor Lewis-Smith

Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home.

David Frost

He rose without a trace.

Kitty Muggeridge on David Frost

Insults on show business awards

Awards are like haemorrhoids: in the end, every asshole gets one.

Frederic Raphael quoting Billy Wilder

If there’s anyone out there involved in illegal movie piracy… don’t do it. Take a good look at these people. These are the people you’re stealing from. Look at them! Face what you’ve done! There are women here who can barely afford enough gown to cover their breasts.

Jon Stewart hosting the 78th Academy Awards

Show business quotes about egotists

Egotism — usually just a case of mistaken nonentity.

Barbara Stanwyck

I had no disagreement with Barbra Streisand. I was merely exasperated at her tendency to be a complete megalomaniac.

Walter Matthau

Show business insults on movies

An explosion in a stupid factory.

Larushka Ivan-Zadeh on A Good Day To Die Hard

It is 146 minutes long, which means that I entered the theatre in the bloom of youth and emerged with a family of field mice living in my long, white moustache. This is an entirely inappropriate length for what is essentially a home video of gay men playing with giant Barbie dolls.

Lindy West on Sex and the City 2

Apocalyptic swank. Each shot looks like an album cover for records you don’t ever want to play.

Pauline Kael on Cat People

An episode of The Love Boat, directed by Cecil B. De Mille.

Chris Tookey on Titanic

The Pelican Brief is a turkey long.

New York magazine

No.

Leonard Maltin on Isn’t it Romantic?

I Aim for the Stars but Sometimes I Hit London

Mort Sahl offers an alternative title for I Aim for the Stars, a film on the life of German-born rocket scientist Werner von Braun

Insults about unfortunate performances

Charlton Heston throws all his punches in the first 10 minutes (3 grimaces and 2 intonations) so that he has nothing left long before he stumbles to the end, 4 hours later, and has to react to the Crucifixion. (He does make it clear, I must admit, that he quite disapproves of it.)

Dwight MacDonald on Heston in Ben-Hur

Michael Keaton appears to have fashioned his hairpiece out of a squirrel.

Tim Robey on Keaton in First Daughter

Apparently thinks badinage is something you put on a small cut.

Vincent Canby on Cybill Shepherd in At Long Last Love

Diesel may be the first actor in the history of cinema to be outperformed by his tattoos.

Bill Muller on Vin Diesel in XXX

What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names?

Roger Ebert on the Spice Girls in Spice World

If only we lived in a world where movie titles were legally binding.

Robbie Collin on Miley Cyrus in The Last Song

Show business insults on critics

Critics can’t even make music by rubbing their back legs together.

Mel Brooks

Don’t pay any attention to the critics—don’t even ignore them.

Samuel Goldwyn

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