From obscure shows off-broadway to being recognized in hit movies and sitcoms, Kathleen Doyle Bates is an actress with a history of hard work and dedication. Best known for her role in the 1990 psychological thriller entitled Misery and also her portrayal of Delphine LaLaurie in American Horror Story, Bates is a character actress with a long list of successes. She’s made her mark in Hollywood, and now Kathy Bates quotes are a source of inspiration.
Bates’ acting career started when she left her hometown in Tennessee to search for opportunities in New York City. She started with small roles off-broadway while also working part-time jobs throughout the city. It took years for critics and fans to truly recognize her talent, but she never gave up.
The 1990s were an important decade for Bates as she turned her sites on Hollywood. It was also the year she earned an Oscar for “Best Actress” and a Golden Globe award thanks to her performance in Misery. With those major awards to her name, more big-time offers started rolling in, including The Wonderful World of Disney: Annie, Failure to Launch, and Fred Claus.
In her personal life, Bates battled bouts of depression in her youth and survived both ovarian and breast cancer. She has worked to raise awareness and research for lymphatic disease and is also a strong voice in the fight for women’s rights in Hollywood. These Kathy Bates quotes span her entire life and shine a light on both her career and wonderful personality.
Here are some of the most notable Kathy Bates quotes:
1. “I haven’t talked much about being an ovarian cancer survivor because I don’t really want to define myself that way.”
2. “I want to be defined by my own essence.”
3. “For a long time I did not want to do television because I did not want to get stuck playing the same person. I wanted the ongoing challenge of a variety of roles.”
4. “The Oscar changed everything. Better salary, working with better people, better projects, more exposure, less privacy.”
5. “I see my sisters, my mother, my grandmother. I like the way I look. I think I have a nice face. I like my eyes, my mouth. I have a good nose. I have good skin.”
6. “My mother used to tell this corny story about how the doctor smacked me on the behind when I was born and I thought it was applause, and I have been looking for it ever since.”
7. “I have to pay the bills just like everybody else, but it also pays my soul to work.”
8. “A heart can only discover what it really wants with experience.”
9. “I find it safer to pursue the powerful, the ugly, the unpleasant.”
10. “There are a lot of powerful women in Hollywood who have been movie stars for a long time who are getting into their forties and fifties. I still want to see them work.”
11. “I was never an ingenue. I’ve always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.”
12. “I love everything. I love being the empathetic characters. I love being the villains. I think it’s like when we’re kids, we like to play all kinds of crazy characters and dress up.”
13. “I didn’t go out on one date in high school. I played guitar and sang and wrote my own music and poetry and stuff when I was a teenager.”
14. “I find that I’m fighting to keep my energy and my passion centered on the work and not on, ‘Will this get me an Oscar?'”
15. “We all love to hear a good story. We save our stories in books. We save our books in libraries. Libraries are the story houses full of all those stories and secrets.”
16. “We had women’s lib in the ’60s, the women fought for their roles, they’re out there in the work force. Now let’s talk about how they’re dealing with things as human beings.”
17. “The problem I have these days is that women are often cast in a role, as a police officer, for example, and then are invariably perceived by the other characters as succeeding in a man’s job, as if they’re doing it in spite of being women.”
18. “Because I’m a woman, because I’m a character actress, because I’m over 40, I’ll be very interested to see, not just for me, but for other actresses, how Hollywood treats us in the next ten, fifteen years. I’m hoping that it’s not going to be so easy to shove people under the rug, as they have in the past.”
19. “I want to see women onscreen the way I see them in society.”
20. “I’m very lucky to be able to do what I love to do, and I hope I can keep doing it for a while.”
These Kathy Bates quotes are testament to the success you can achieve with passion and hard work. Share them with fellow fans to celebrate this talented actress.
