Bette Davis Wiki, Bio, Age, Net Worth, and Other Facts

Bette Davis Wiki, Bio, Age, Net Worth, and Other Facts

Below is a compiled list of the most interesting facts about Bette Davis. Check it out!

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.

Interesting Facts about Bette Davis

  • She claimed her favourite role was that of Mrs. Agnes Hurley in The Catered Affair (1956) because of the challenge of the role.
  • In an interview with Dick Cavett in 1971, she said her salary at the time she shot Jezebel (1938) was $650 a week.
  • She was awarded 2 Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Picture at 6225 Hollywood Boulevard; and for Television at 6335 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.
  • In honor of her 100th birthday, she was honored as Turner Classic Movie’s Star of the Month. [April 2008]
  • Her favorite line is from the film The Cabin in the Cotton (1932) where she said, “I’d like to kiss you, but I just washed my hair”. Many years later, she used it in her acceptance speech when she won the American Film Institute (AFI) Lifetime Achievement Award in 1977, except she used the word “love”, instead of “like”: “I’d love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair”.
  • She considered her debut screen test for Universal Pictures to be so bad that she ran screaming from the projection room.
  • Was one of two actresses (with Faye Dunaway) to have two villainous roles ranked in the American Film Institute’s 100 Years of The Greatest Heroes and Villains, as Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes (1941) at #43 and as Baby Jane Hudson in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) at #44.
  • Was the highest paid woman in the United States (1942).
  • As of 2016, she holds the record of youngest actress to receive seven Academy Award nominations. She earned her seventh Oscar nomination in 1945, at the age of 36, for Mr. Skeffington (1944).
  • In the early 1980s, she was once asked by an interviewer if she had any regrets about her career. In answer, she remarked that the only regret she had was that she was never able to appear in a movie with Clark Gable, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, or James Stewart during the days of the studio system because Warner Bros. never did “loan outs”.
  • It is said that one of her real true loves was director William Wyler but he was married and refused to leave his wife.
  • Returned to work three months after giving birth to her daughter Barbara Merrill in order to begin filming June Bride (1948).

Personal Quotes by Bette Davis

Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it’s not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.

Bette Davis

The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Bette Davis

Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should all be bigger than life.

Bette Davis

Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it.

Bette Davis