Oscar Wilde: 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Sarah Bernhardt: 'I don't care if you burn.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I love Oscar Wilde, still the wittiest writer of anyone, dead or living.
Oscar Wilde turned the world upside down and was able to laugh at it, and hopefully by the time I'm 120 and worn out, that's what I will achieve. I love being alive so much.
Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile.
It was extremely important to show that Wilde's sexuality was not just some intellectual idea. It was real, and it was about the human body. To just have mentioned it and not shown it would have been, I think, peculiar and wrong.
My least favorite phrase in the English language is 'I don't care.'
Each of us should think of the future. Every puff on a cigarette is another tick closer to a time bomb of terrible consequences. Christopher Hitchens didn't care about the consequences of smoking cigarettes. Tragically, he died of throat cancer in December 2011.
The two things I've been told most often since my career took off - by taxi drivers, lifelong friends and everyone in between - have been, 'Don't ever change, Margot' and 'You can't do that anymore, Margot.'
Now that I'm gone, I tell you, don't smoke.
Would you ask Picasso to explain 'Guernica?' Would you ask Nabokov to explain 'Lolita?' Would you ask Tolstoy about 'War and Peace?' No, you wouldn't dare.
I don't smoke and I don't want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films.