Classic stars' quotes on moms and motherhood

Celebrating Mother's Day, the next are 50 quotes from classic actors remembering their mothers and explaining what motherhood and parenting was or is for them. Some of the memories are sad, some are happy, some are full of nostalgia, some are funny, some are resentful. There are vivid descriptions and honest words. They are representative of a complicated world that not always is kind, warm and simple, but sometimes it is; and it helps you to appreciate what you've got. These are the stars, some gone, some alive, opening a bit of their private world for you. 

DESCRIBING AND REMEMBERING THEIR MOTHERS

My mother was marvellous, far more alive and vivacious than I'll ever be. She always tried to keep my feet on the ground - Julie Andrews

My mother died when I was nine years old...What does she expect me to do? Do it all by myself - James Dean

I have met a lot of people knocking around the world since, but I have never met a more thoroughly refined woman than my mother. If I have amounted to anything, it will be due to her - Charles Chaplin

I was a mistake. My mother didn't want to have me. I guess she never wanted me. I probably got in her way. I know I must have disgraced her. A divorced woman has enough problems getting a man, I guess, but one with an illegitimate baby.... I wish, I still wish, she had wanted me - Marilyn Monroe

My mother was a delicate black-haired beauty, with olive skin, frail and feminine to look upon. What isn't apparent in the photograph is the extent of her strength, and her will to control -- a deep need to receive unreservedly the very affection she sought to control - Cary Grant

A long time later I learned that she [his mother] had experienced a nervous breakdown and been taken to an institution in a nearby quiet country town to recuperate. I was not to see my mother again for more than twenty years, by which time my name was changed and I was a full-grown man living in America, thousands of miles away in California. I was known to most people of the world by sight and by name, yet not to my mother - Cary Grant

My mother campaigned for women's suffrage and birth control. [laughs] Very unpopular topics in the early 1900s - Katharine Hepburn

Mother beat the hell out of us. She'd have wild outbursts - Burt Lancaster 

 

For more quotes go to Via Margutta 51. To see a great gallery of stars with their moms and children check out this post.

Excerpted from Via Margutta 51