Barry Humphries Quotes

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Barry Humphries

Profession : Comedian

Birth : February 17, 1934

I'm approaching 70. Unfortunately, from the wrong direction.

Barry Humphries

I never thought that I would become a staple in the Australian cultural diet. The equivalent of bread or milk, or a fine old Tasmanian Mauve Vein. I think it's because I talk about things that people dare not mention. I don't mean raunchy things or unsavoury things. I call a spade a spade - I discuss things in a realistic manner.

Barry Humphries

Oddly enough, Dame Edna is not interested in show business. Her friends in Los Angeles are mostly in the world of petroleum. She used to have some acting friends. Sadly, Joan Rivers has passed on. Larry Hagman was a close friend. A number of others.

Barry Humphries

New Zealand is a country of thirty thousand million sheep, three million of whom think they are human.

Barry Humphries

I've decided the secret of parenting is benevolent neglect.

Barry Humphries

Political correctness means nothing to me. Nothing. It's the new Puritanism, darling. Preventing us from expressing ourselves.

Barry Humphries

I am writing a book called 'The History of Australia in Hundred Objects.' It's of things we have invented in Australia. And you know, some of them are amazing. We invented the clapper boards used in films. We invented those cranes - those big long cranes used on construction sites.

Barry Humphries

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were friends and the last people I expected would predecease me. They were, in a sense, casualties of fame.

Barry Humphries

Glamour comes from within. My beauty regime begins with my personality.

Barry Humphries

Madonna is a creation, so perhaps we should give her and the factory that created her a little credit, but I think that she should quietly disappear now. Poor Madge seems unable to decide whether she wants to look like Marilyn Monroe or Marlene Dietrich.

Barry Humphries

In Australia, they really want to turn me into a religion. A religion! Can you imagine? The Church of Edna? Oh. I don't want to be over-revered.

Barry Humphries

Am I old-fashioned? I think I might be. I am a lucky woman, because I was born with a priceless gift... the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others.

Barry Humphries

There's to be a film about my life. I can give this as an exclusive now. Meryl Streep was offered the part but, no, I wanted Kate Winslet. Kylie Minogue is playing me in middle age. In old age, I'm not sure who's going to play me. I haven't got there yet. Perhaps Cate Blanchett. Or Jacki Weaver.

Barry Humphries

To live in Australia permanently is rather like going to a party and dancing all night with one's mother.

Barry Humphries

I feel like I've cheated. I never knew what to do. I was never a good enough painter to earn a living, and so I drifted into the theatre, and I've had a successful life. I feel guilty that I've never done a day's work in my life!

Barry Humphries

Those women with collagen lips just look like frogs - 'muffin mouths,' I call them. There's not a line on their brows, and all the emotion gone from their faces, like all those actresses in 'Desperate Housewives.'

Barry Humphries

Most of my contemporaries at school entered the World of Business, the logical destiny of bores.

Barry Humphries

I hate it when theater people go on about professionalism - aren't they boring? I try to be as unprofessional as possible. And I'm a little bit politically incorrect.

Barry Humphries

I've turned from an ordinary Australian housewife into a gigastar, icon, talk-show host, swami, spin doctor... and now I'm a style guru!

Barry Humphries

I guess you could say I'm an addict - an adrenalin addict - I get great excitement and stimulation from doing stuff in public, even though I'm nervous and I have very bad stage fright.

Barry Humphries