I was already in my early twenties, but I looked much younger because I was fresh-faced and, well, short. So I did songs such as ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’ and jokes such as describing current events as ‘ancient history.’ Boy, did the audience roar at that one.
We actively encourage teenagers not to have babies, we applaud young career women in their twenties, then before you know it you find yourself, as I did, aged 32 at a friend’s wedding and being quizzed by everyone about why you haven’t got round to reproducing yet.
Here’s the truth. Your teens and twenties are your Plan A. At 50, you’re assessing whether Plan B or Plan C or any of the other plans you hatched actually worked. Your sixties and seventies, they’re an improvisation.
You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.
Movie acting is a great job for your twenties: You travel all over, you have affairs with people, and you throw yourself into one part and then another. It gets more challenging as you get older, and it’s not just having a daughter, it’s wanting to have your own life and be yourself.
I am pleased to say that I am not a tortured comedian – I laugh a lot. My twenties weren’t particularly happy, but it’s the same for a lot of people. In your thirties, you realise that your life and your worries are really insignificant, and you have to force yourself to be more positive and take each day as a gift.
The twenties are a deceptively challenging-slash-painful time. I’m just glad to be out of that phase.
As I get older, the more I don’t want my life to be emotionally out of balance in the way it was in my twenties.
But that incessant drive to be out there in the literary universe that was important to me when I was in my twenties, like going to a Paris Review party or whatever, that seems totally irrelevant now.
In my early twenties, I got the basics covered. In retrospect, one of the great things about success is that I never really had to work in a factory full-time. So that’s a blessing.
The Twenties have this sort of attitude where you never know what’s around the corner.
Because I think your twenties are really difficult, aren’t they?
When eyeliner was introduced in the Twenties by Max Factor, a pioneer of Hollywood film cosmetics who began selling to the public, even the word ‘makeup’ was a revelation.
I was really, really wild in my early twenties and a bit self-destructive.
I just did in my early twenties what most did when they were teenagers, being free and exploring and making mistakes, but I did it in France. I did it privately.
At around 20 years old, I started to educate myself on nutrition. I’m so grateful that I taught myself the importance of health and fitness in my early twenties. I created a lifestyle that I love, and because of that, I’ve never had to diet.
The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your life, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there’s nothing really to talk about.
Being a single girl in New York… it’s what you should be doing in your twenties!
I have breakups that I can credit to every song. In my twenties, I picked people who would create that dysfunction and drama, so I could draw upon it.
You get to a certain point – gratefully – when you’re out of your twenties, and you realize how fleeting life is. So, it becomes important to feel as if the people in your life know exactly how you feel about them at all times.
I was married when I was in my early twenties, and my former husband, an absolutely lovely man, didn’t get the writing thing.
I’ve never really socialized; I’ve always been anti-social and preferred to be at home. I was never, even my late teens and early twenties, into clubs and parties and stuff like that.
I’d spent my twenties trying to be everything to everybody. I had my family, my straight friends, and I was starting to develop a gay circle of friends. I was seeing some men, seeing some women, and trying to sort it all out.
When I was 49, I posed for Playboy – I was very flattered to be asked. I was quite honoured, really, considering that most of the models they feature are in their twenties.
To continue playing late into your twenties in the same style that you once played as a teenager is not possible.
I’d been waiting to turn thirty my whole life. For some reason, when I was eleven, I was like, ‘I know thirty’s going to be good. Get through those twenties!’
I read all of the books by Tolkien, including ‘The Hobbit,’ when I was in my twenties, and his deep love of nature and all things green resonates deeply with me.
I think it’s natural as you get to the end of your twenties to start thinking about what you could have done differently – whether they went well or whether they went terribly.
I was in my early twenties and trying to figure out what I wanted to do and comics came back in my life and I thought I really want to give it a try.
My twenties were amazing. My thirties were all highs and lows.
I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published.
I like myself a lot more than I used to. I had a very difficult time in my twenties especially. It was hard for me to look in the mirror and find something that I liked about myself.
It doesn’t surprise me that men in their twenties and thirties are often looking for a much older woman. What is the problem with a man of 30 being with a woman of 50? It is a matter of energy and the soul, not a matter of age of the body.
If in my twenties I’d gotten one of the two-dozen roles that I did screen tests for and almost got, I think I would have become bored with the awards circuit, the whole hype machine.
I had my mid-life crisis at 29. I’ve got my thirties and forties into the back end of my twenties.
I started to sing a lot more during my twenties when I was struggling with depression.
When I look back on my twenties, I just remember being afraid of everything, and in my thirties, I’m actually excited by things. And if things don’t work out, you know, by the time you’ve hit your thirties, you’ve had your fair share of disappointments.
Our kids are in their twenties now, which is a wonderful time.
I hadn’t really thought about politics as a career in my twenties or early thirties.
Maybe I am a little bit guilty of trying to convince myself that I am cool to this point – even today. But I am so much more healthy than I used to be in my twenties, because I was not accepted at all.
I romanticized about it in my twenties, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed being a spy. I worry too much.
I wish I’d lived in New York in my early twenties. Or learned to speak more languages at a young age. I didn’t do either.
I studied film scoring and orchestration and conducting and arranging in my twenties, and I scored a lot of television shows and other things.
I’d spent so much of my youth and twenties dying my hair bright red to either look like Ziggy Stardust or Johnny Rotten.
The thought of having sclerosis of the synapses is alarming. I wonder if in later life I will pay the price for having overstimulated my mental apparatus in my twenties.
By the time you are in your thirties, most of the time, you’ve got a job, you can pay for your rent, you can create this nice world around you. And still, you’re only in your thirties – you’re not that far away from your twenties, which is when you’re making all of your stupid mistakes.
My twenties were my practice. My thirties were when I really hit my stride with GoPro and did all the heavy lifting to build the business.
Do you want to continue being great at being in your twenties, or do you want to step up and graduate into adulthood?
I used to be terribly aggressive in my twenties.
I love my grey hair and wrinkles. I love the fact that my face has more of an edge and more character than it did when I was in my twenties and thirties. No Botox for me.
There is that time right around 30 when you think, your twenties have gone by, and now you really are a grown up, and you do have to figure out what you’re going to do.
I was a freelancer all through my twenties. I did about one story a month and I wanted to write fiction, so the stories that I would do were precursors to ‘Sex and the City.’
‘Sunset Boulevard’ – the story of Hollywood movies draped on a depressing sex affair – is an uncompromising study of American decadence displaying a sad, worn, methodical beauty few films have had since the late twenties.
There is no way I’d have wanted to live in the Twenties. It was really crap for women.
I write incredibly slowly. And, on top of that, I spent my entire youth and twenties working like a dog, so one of the things that happened when I finished ‘Drown’ was that I got busy living. I’d never travelled, I’d never seen anything. So I did as much travelling as my job teaching would allow.
Back in your twenties you’re discovering your boundaries in life, whether it’s with relationships or friendships and partying.
I’ve enjoyed all my times, teens, twenties, thirties, forties, and now I’m enjoying my fifties.
