Dishonesty, lack of integrity catches up with you.
Dawn Steel
Some children’s music is aimed just at kids, and it can be very childlike.
Dawn Steel
You’re not free in life until you’re free of wanting other people’s approval.
Dawn Steel
I was so busy climbing up this ladder, staying above the water. If there was only room for one woman in a room, I wanted to be her. I’m not proud of it. I certainly don’t feel that way now. It was an absolute evolution for me.
Dawn Steel
I’d like my epitaph to read ‘Given the amount of time she had, she did the best job she could.’ Also that I’m a nice person… and a good mother.
Dawn Steel
People on the lower rungs are more vulnerable to sexual harassment than those at the top.
Dawn Steel
There’s no training for the business, no credentials necessary to enter… It’s all about entrepreneurs, innate street intelligence, and instincts. It’s a business which encourages people with dreams. That’s the essence of Hollywood.
Dawn Steel
I think exciting sexuality is part of the fantasy, part of the entertainment of a love story.
Dawn Steel
If the doors are going to close on me, it’s a little late.
Dawn Steel
What sets Iris Stevenson apart is her success in a system that in no way supports her – with the hardest possible children to convert.
Dawn Steel
We manufacture a culture in the movie business, and whatever we put out creates a dark side and a bright side, too.
Dawn Steel
It hurt me deeply, this reputation as tough, hard, mean.
Dawn Steel
In some ways I was curt because there’s an unbelievable amount to accomplish in a day.
Dawn Steel
I’m not Mary Poppins, but I think I functioned with integrity.
Dawn Steel
I wanted to be respected by filmmakers, and why should they respect me if they saw that my superiors did not treat me with respect.
Dawn Steel
I would walk into my office, and I would close the door, and I would say, ‘I won’t cry, I won’t cry, I won’t cry’… At least, I wasn’t going to let them see me cry.
Dawn Steel
That’s my proudest accomplishment: that I don’t feel like a grown-up.
Dawn Steel
In my family, education was something you endured. My parents weren’t educated past high school, and the only book in our house was a ‘Reader’s Digest’ condensed book. Can you imagine?
Dawn Steel
I have to tell you, I’m a great teacher. Ask anybody who worked for me, except some secretaries who weren’t very good.
Dawn Steel
Some friends of mine had parents who made school a treat, a gift – not something to be endured.
Dawn Steel
It’s unfathomable how you live without your mother.
Dawn Steel
I had an obsession with underarm shields – pointy ones, round ones, full ones, half ones.
Dawn Steel
If you can market smut and toilet paper, you can market movies.
Dawn Steel
I was trained to be loud, passionate, direct. I didn’t realize for the longest time I was intimidating.
Dawn Steel
I’m tired of being the bad guy all the time, saying ‘no’ to people I like.
Dawn Steel
Working together is the quickest road to marital problems.
Dawn Steel
I wouldn’t want anyone to think that work is the major thing in my life.
Dawn Steel
Having money is better than not having it, but I’ve been poor, and I’ve survived.
Dawn Steel
It’s about passion, and if somebody is passionate about a development deal, they’re going to get it made.
Dawn Steel
When I get anxious and scared, I probably lose my temper more than I should.
Dawn Steel
Foreign revenues are tremendously important, but foreign audiences are dying for American movies, not for films they could make themselves.
Dawn Steel
The men I worked for didn’t look at me as having any gender at all. They regarded me more as a workhorse.
Dawn Steel
I love stories about underdogs.
Dawn Steel
Historically, Vietnam movies have been profitable. All of them. ‘Platoon,’ ‘Full Metal Jacket,’ ‘Apocalypse Now,’ ‘The Deer Hunter.’ You’re looking at movies that have been not pretty successful, but very successful. The foreign numbers have been extraordinary.
Dawn Steel
I was the first studio executive to meet with Sean Penn after ‘Taps’ in 1981. I was anxious to develop things with him when nobody knew who he was.
Dawn Steel
We have to make some movies we have passion for, respect for.
Dawn Steel
You do sequels because they are tent poles. They open well, and they hold the tent up. But in between, you make a movie you respect.
Dawn Steel
Visibility is dangerous because if a guy cuts you off in traffic, you can’t call him a name – it might get to the press.
Dawn Steel
I just love the idea of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, whether it’s the success of ‘Cool Runnings,’ which is the success of four guys from Jamaica who had never seen snow, or whether it’s my success, just as a human being.
Dawn Steel
You have to persevere, you have to just not give up, and you have to know what you want. You have to be able to see your dream.
Dawn Steel
Don’t believe everything you read in the trades.
Dawn Steel
I hate management. I hate management. I just do.
Dawn Steel
I felt that if I shared the lessons that I learned – both the good ones and the bad ones – that I might make the climb a little less painful for other women.
Dawn Steel
I react to stress badly. I handle it better these days. But I’m a very straightforward person.
Dawn Steel
I don’t know that I would say abrasive. In some ways, I was curt because there’s an unbelievable amount to accomplish in a day, and maybe I was insensitive considering the pressures and responsibilities of these jobs.
Dawn Steel
I think women’s relationships with other women are very complicated and depend on their relationships with their mothers. Mine was fraught with problems. So I didn’t necessarily trust women for a long time.
Dawn Steel
The first war movie I ever saw was ‘Platoon,’ and I was eight months pregnant. So my husband, producer Charles Roven, wasn’t sure I’d make it.
Dawn Steel
An epic is the canvas Brian DePalma paints on.
Dawn Steel
I’ve gone far in the movie business, but no matter how far I go, every time I pick up the phone to call Tom Hanks or Robin Williams, I wonder if they’ll call me back. And you know what? Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t.
Dawn Steel
A really hard lesson to learn is that most of the time, it’s not about you.
Dawn Steel
If I can do it, anyone can do it.
Dawn Steel
I started with nothing. Less than nothing.
Dawn Steel
The more I can stay on the creative side, the happier I am.
Dawn Steel
I thought it was great being the only girl in the room. I loved the attention. After I got used to it, I didn’t want to be the only girl in the room. I had no one to talk to.
Dawn Steel
It wasn’t until I saw ‘Rocky’ that I realized movies could affect people beyond mere entertainment.
Dawn Steel
I felt more comfortable in TV than in the film world where the players were more erudite and intellectual.
Dawn Steel
I don’t want my child to have unhealthy values.
Dawn Steel