Parenting & Family Quote by Millicent Martin

There is a sly humility in the way Millicent Martin frames Baby Jane not as a grand, tortured creation but as dress-up: a game, a costume, a little theatrical lark. Coming from an actress, it’s a reminder that performance isn’t always about plumbing the psyche; sometimes it’s about play. That word "kid" is doing double duty. It signals a return to the earliest impulse behind acting (trying on identities for fun) while quietly nodding to Baby Jane’s own arrested development, the character’s infamous child-star residue fossilized into adulthood.

The subtext is also protective. By calling it "being a kid and dressing up", Martin disarms the potential stigma of camp, grotesquerie, or horror that clings to Baby Jane as a cultural reference point. It’s a way of saying: don’t over-mythologize it. This isn’t method martyrdom; it’s craft and costume, a performer leaning into the artificiality that makes the character pop. In an era where actors are often expected to sell suffering as authenticity, Martin’s line prizes the opposite: the visible seams, the knowingly worn mask.

Contextually, Baby Jane arrives with a built-in cultural echo - a shorthand for faded glamour, infantilization, and the cruelty of show business turning inward. Martin’s intent seems to be reclaiming that iconography as something lighter and more controlled. She’s not being consumed by Baby Jane; she’s putting her on, the way a child puts on a cape, and in that choice is a quiet assertion of agency.