I depended a lot on being an over-the-top, ridiculous, obnoxious, Staten Island Princess. That’s what I did, and I guess the rest is history.
I do not… look very feminine. Diana, Princess of Wales is feminine… I am… femi-none.
Parenting girls makes you quite gender-conscious – it’s almost impossible to fight the power of pink. It’s not such a terrible thing to want to be a princess when you’re five, but it would be nice if there were some other options.
I was in Boston, Massachusetts, when Princess Diana died.
In 1997, we took time off, and that’s when Oasis broke and Princess Diana died and I was home with my baby hating the music industry. People asked what I thought about the Spice Girls, and honestly, I was so happy to tell them I couldn’t be bothered to care.
Hire me for the next picture. I don’t have to just play down-and-out trailer trash and mean, old, wicked, old nuns. I could play a princess or a queen. That’s all I wanted to do. Because campaigning does go on. It’s a part of selling the film.
I loved Charlotte Bronte when I was little, and I wanted to be Charlotte Bronte the way people want to be a princess.
I was taken to my first fashion show – Nina Ricci haute couture – in Paris by the White Russian princess, down on her luck, whom I was boarding with in Paris in 1963. I was captivated by the glamour of the gilded salon, the elegant clothes, and the audience of grand ladies.
I’ve totally embraced it. I like Princess Leia. I like how she was feisty.
Princess Diana was a nice dancer because she had confidence. In fact, when we danced together she started to lead, and I looked her in eye and went, ‘No, you have to let me lead.’ So I grabbed her around the waist and we were off to the races.
People tend to associate fairies with princesses, but they couldn’t be more different. Princesses have dynastic and domestic pressures, and they get parked on glass hills. Fairies don’t have families. They don’t clean or cook. They sip nectar from flowers and dance by the light of the moon.
I get treated like a princess in India. It is like a different world.
When Princess Diana died, I couldn’t understand why people were mourning her death in such an enormous, hysterical way when they didn’t actually know her for real.
There are some people who leave a lifelong impact on you. Gayatri Devi, whom we remember as Princess Ayesha of Cooch Behar, is one such persona I will admire all my life.
My original idea was to photograph Princess Diana in her tiara. But then I thought, am I interested in seeing another picture of her as a royal person, or would I rather see what she is actually about? And that’s why I decided to do her without jewels, without shoes, without trimmings.
It’s kind of embarrassing, but in my early 20s, I used to want to be a princess. But I didn’t want to have to marry somebody in order to do it!
I have been Princess Leia exclusively. It’s been a part of my life for 40 years.
‘Apricot Princess’ is like an inside album. You can listen to the album and feel all of those emotions within one night.
Wonder Woman isn’t even American; she’s an Amazon princess.
When I was little, I had to write down what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I wrote, ‘I want to be an actress-singer-dancer because you can be a rich fairy princess and tell someone off.’
Deep in every heart slumbers a dream, and the couturier knows it: every woman is a princess.
I have four boys and two girls, and the girls, they typically want you to draw princesses, Tinkerbell, Cinderella, things like that.
I love ‘The Princess Diaries!’
I was never like, ‘Oh, I really want to play Cinderella.’ That’s not necessarily always been the dream. But it’s super fun to play a princess.
Side note, I was Prom Prince. My friend and I campaigned to be Prom King and Queen, and we got the rest of the non-popular people in the school to vote for us. We didn’t win, but we got Prince and Princess.
I was too shy to go and meet Princess Diana.
In Mumbai, life is always on the go, but in Delhi, I get a break; it gives me a lot of peace. Here I feel like I am on a pampered holiday, and I am treated like a princess.
When I was 11, I had an Ugly Sister birthday party. All my idea. Most girls want to be a fairy or a princess, but there I am with beauty spots and fur and fluorescent pink kiss-curls.
I saw ‘Star Wars’ for the first time when I was four years old. Sure, I thought Princess Leia was awesome. But the character I identified with most was Luke Skywalker. I left the theater certain the Force was strong with me, that I could train to be a Jedi and wield a lightsaber just like Luke.
I was of the generation where most of the Disney princesses and female characters were not girls that I admired. They just weren’t characters I looked up to and identified with.
I love really epic films. I really like ‘The Princess Bride,’ ‘Lord of the Rings.’ I really like ‘Star Wars.’ I love ‘Harry Potter.’ I’m obsessed with ‘Harry Potter.’
I was very fond of Princess Diana. She used to have me over to lunch to ask my advice. I’d give her good advice, and she’d say: ‘I entirely agree. Paul, you’re so right.’ Then she’d go and do the opposite.
The days when a princess was too delicate to sleep on a mattress with a pea under it are long gone.
It is not a happy lot being a princess in any country, but especially Japan in which every tiny aspect of one’s life is governed by the most rigid rules of protocol.
I enjoy taking jobs that make fun of me – or me as Princess Leia, or me as the writer, or whatever, as some idea.
I’m not a princess. My mother is, not I. I am the niece of a head of state. And with this status, I have some representational duties – nothing very constraining or very exceptional.
‘The Princess and the Warrior’ is looking at the same things as ‘Lola’ – just from a different angle.
In my dreams, I could be a Princess, and that’s what I was. Like most little girls, I believed nothing less than a Prince could make my dreams come true.
Growing up, the image I had of Princess Margaret was completely different. I knew that she was a slightly tragic figure, but I didn’t know why. Now, I love her with my all my heart. She was such an amazing person, and getting to ‘know’ her better was an honor.
When I came back from my honeymoon, I was informed that it was not appropriate for a princess to be involved in trade. This came from the court. What about my income? That was my problem, I was told.
Once we played for the Princess of Monaco in Paris. We were the biggest ducks ever, wearing rented tuxedos. We trashed the party, took a bunch of girls and champagne in limos underneath the Eiffel Tower, and set up an acoustic show. It was like a Hilary Duff movie.
The King’s son, who was told that a great princess, whom nobody knew, was come, ran out to receive her. He gave her his hand as she alighted from the coach, and led her into the hall where the company were assembled.
It’s hard to see yourself as a princess because it involves a huge leap of the imagination and sort of requires you to believe you can be that, which is a scary, weird thing.
When I was little… I didn’t relate to princesses. I saw Maleficent, and I just thought she was so – she was so elegant.
After many decades of Disney movies, we have been conditioned to expect princesses to fall in love quickly with their charming princes and ‘live happily ever after.’
There was a docudrama that was made, called ‘The Death Of A Princess,’ which was about a true story in Saudi Arabia. It was about a public execution for adultery. And when the movie was aired on British television, the Saudi government threatened to cut off oil exports and to cut off diplomatic relations.
When the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were growing up, that was at it’s height and the War cemented that with photographs of the Royal Family having breakfast together and so on, by pinning their reputation so firmly on that particular issue.
When Princess Leia hit the scene in 1977, she was a pretty formidable character.
Watching Princess walking down the aisle… when I heard the music and I saw her come down, I lost it. I was like, I’m just gonna let it go and enjoy the love and positive emotion.
I always have Band-Aids, ideally ones with princesses on them, because they’re the best.
In Russia, I pretend to be a lot of princesses and wait for prince. That was my dream.
I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo… imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways… that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in.
I mean, every child at one stage dreams of being a prince or a princess.
‘Little Princess’ was the first big movie that I did in America with big stages where we had kind of a different schedule to work. We had a great production designer, Bo Welch, and we had time to think about the movie in pre-production.
If I wasn’t a singer, I would be a fairy princess.
I’m a pop princess at heart. Pop is about distilling what you want to say and making it easy. And the way I write isn’t about making things easy. It’s a weird juxtaposition.
In ‘The White Princess,’ the women are leading the story, and they’re holding everything together. It’s definitely a world of women’s empowerment.
