I really had very little to contribute, so I played a lot of hatcheck girls, and did mob scenes, extra scenes, dancing scenes, just to have the experience of being on a set. I spent years at that. If the studio wanted a photograph to advertise a film they’d say, ‘Who is it that has a good pair of legs and a good pair of breasts and is pretty and not working?’ And it was always Ava because she was never working.
[on her first screen test] There wasn’t a thing that I could do. I couldn’t act–I was the first to be eliminated in high school plays. I had no training whatsoever. I was just a pretty little girl. But I loved the idea, because I loved movies.
God knows I’ve got so many frailties myself, I ought to be able to understand and forgive them in others. But I don’t.
WILDsound Festival 