Eleanora Duse:
I feel that I have never known nor shall I ever know how to act! Those poor women in my plays have entered so totally into my heart and head, that while I am striving as best I can to make the audience understand them, I almost feel like comforting them … but it is they who, little by little, end up by comforting me! How – and why, and at what point – this affectionate, inexplicable, and undeniable “exchange” takes place between those women and me … it would take too long and be too difficult to relate precisely. The fact remains that, while everybody else is suspicious of the women, I get along beautifully with them! I pay no attention if they have lied, if they have betrayed, if they have sinned, if they were born crooked, as long as I feel that they have wept, that they have suffered as a result of lying or betraying or loving.
I love that picture of her. So regal looking. So much expression in her eyes! Look at them!
(Though I still can’t hear her name anymore without thinking of that scene in State and Main with William H. Macy and Sarah Jessica Parker in the bathroom, where she claims she’s found God and won’t appear topless as agreed. “Sometimes it feels like everyone just wants a piece of us…and you know what?” And then that serious, convinced expression on Parker’s face “We have to give it!”)