"Richard Burton rang me up once and said, Do you know you're my only leading lady I've never slept with? I said, Well, please don't tell everybody, it's the worst image"
About this Quote
Julie Andrews flips the old boys-club mythology of show business into a punchline, and the joke lands because it’s calibrated to her brand: velvet voice, iron control, no scandal. Richard Burton’s line is classic swagger dressed up as candor, a phone call framed like a compliment but built on a presumption that intimacy is part of the job, the proof of being a “real” leading lady. Andrews refuses the setup. She doesn’t scold him; she out-performs him.
“Please don’t tell everybody” is the sly pivot. She pretends his boast is her embarrassment, then detonates it with “it’s the worst image.” The subtext is sharp: in this industry, reputations are props, and hers is a particularly profitable one. The humor isn’t prudishness; it’s strategy. She’s acknowledging that her public persona has been marketed as pristine for so long that even a rumor of not sleeping with Burton could sound like failure, a weird inversion of the era’s sexual brag economy.
The line also winks at the audience’s knowledge of Burton’s legend - heavy-drinking, heavy-loving, a man whose affairs were practically a press release. By treating access to him as something you might be ashamed to have missed, Andrews exposes how absurd that status game is, while staying charmingly inside the rules. It’s a masterclass in deflection: she protects her boundaries, keeps the mood light, and subtly reminds everyone that “image” is both cage and currency. In 20 seconds of banter, she shows how a woman survives Hollywood by turning the gaze back on itself.
“Please don’t tell everybody” is the sly pivot. She pretends his boast is her embarrassment, then detonates it with “it’s the worst image.” The subtext is sharp: in this industry, reputations are props, and hers is a particularly profitable one. The humor isn’t prudishness; it’s strategy. She’s acknowledging that her public persona has been marketed as pristine for so long that even a rumor of not sleeping with Burton could sound like failure, a weird inversion of the era’s sexual brag economy.
The line also winks at the audience’s knowledge of Burton’s legend - heavy-drinking, heavy-loving, a man whose affairs were practically a press release. By treating access to him as something you might be ashamed to have missed, Andrews exposes how absurd that status game is, while staying charmingly inside the rules. It’s a masterclass in deflection: she protects her boundaries, keeps the mood light, and subtly reminds everyone that “image” is both cage and currency. In 20 seconds of banter, she shows how a woman survives Hollywood by turning the gaze back on itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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