Wit & Attitude Quote by Lynn Fontanne

There is a delicious double edge in Fontanne admitting she "lied to everybody" and then pivoting to "naturally", as if deception were just good posture. It lands because it refuses the tidy moral divide between sincerity and performance. For an actress of her era, the public expected elegance, discretion, and a kind of polished truthiness: private life kept private, emotion rendered convincingly on cue. Fontanne punctures that expectation with a confession that’s also a flex.

The specific intent feels less like contrition than control. She’s naming the game before anyone else can. "I lie very well" is brazen, but it’s also a defense mechanism: if you claim the indictment, you blunt its sting. The subtext is that everyone in her orbit was participating in the same contract, whether they admitted it or not. In theater, the lie is not a breach; it’s the product. Audiences buy tickets precisely to be fooled, then applaud the skill of the fooling.

Context matters: Fontanne was a major stage figure, part of a celebrity culture that prized mystique long before social media demanded constant "authenticity". Her line anticipates our current unease with curated selves. When she says she lies "naturally", she suggests that performance isn’t an exception reserved for actors; it’s a heightened version of what society calls manners, professionalism, even survival. The real sting is the implication that the scandal isn’t lying, it’s forgetting we’re all doing it.