Daily Inspiration Quote by Lynn Fontanne

A good actress knows the dirtiest secret in the room: money talks, but it rarely tells a story. Lynn Fontanne's "We can be bought, but we can't be bored" is a line with a smile like a knife. On the surface it sounds like a cheeky confession of show-business pragmatism: yes, there are contracts, patrons, producers, and the unromantic math of making theater happen. But the punch lands in the second clause, where she draws a hard boundary around the only thing she treats as non-negotiable: attention.

The subtext is less "we're for sale" than "you can't purchase our inner life". Fontanne frames boredom as the real indignity, worse than being paid off, because boredom is what happens when you're trapped in work that doesn't respect your intelligence. In an industry built on rehearsed illusion, she insists on the one feeling you can't fake for long. You can perform tired, you can perform delighted, you can even perform in love with the script. You can't perform genuine engagement if the material is dead.

The context matters: Fontanne came up in an era when actresses were simultaneously glamorized and policed, expected to be grateful, charming, and manageable. Her line flips that expectation. She admits the commerce to disarm it, then reasserts agency where it counts: the appetite for challenge, risk, and play. It's also a sly warning to anyone holding the purse strings. Pay us, fine. But if you want obedience, bring something better than cash: bring something worth doing.