Richard Attenborough:
"The complexity of dramatic impression vital to the credibility of Myra was hard to find. Also an intellectual ability to follow and understand the character. I didn't believe Simone could convey, as Kim did, the otherworldliness which this woman inhabited in her private fantasies....
"She so occupied the psyche of this extraordinary woman, it impelled her to take certain moves and make certain decisions which just a good actress, a really very good actress, simply wouldn't get anywhere near. She transferred her viewers into the world which she occupied....
"It was quite complicated when I put my actor's hat on. Because you never quite knew what she was going to do, not merely in terms of the delivery of her lines. It used to drive the camera operator to his wits' end--you didn't know which side of the set she was going to be on.
"[In 1963], the constraints on lenses and microphones and so one were considerable. Now if somebody's two or three feet off their marks, it couldn't matter less. You're capable of holding, with a good focus puller, whatever you want. In those days, you couldn't be a foot off your mark, unless the dolly pusher was absolutely superb. But the end result was bewitching."
--Interview with Jon Krampner, January 25, 2002, Female Brando, p. 221-23.
Bryan Forbes:
"She always went beyond the evidence, never taking the easy route and constantly surpris[ing] me and Richard Attenborough with the purity of her invention...
"There was one notable occasion when I was panning her through the kitchen with the child out to the back yard. And she suddenly stopped, but the camera operator went on, and I had to say, 'Cut!' I said, 'What's the problem, Kim?' She said, 'I was relating to the oranges.' There was a bowl of oranges on the table. So I said, 'What a brilliant idea. I wish I'd thought of it. Unfortunately, Kim, it's a wasted shot. Why don't you relate to them on the move, instead of stopping and relating?' She was a tortured soul in many ways. She ws really too good an actress to suffocate herself with all that Method shit."
--Interview with Jon Krampner, October 12, 2001, Female Brando, p. 222-23.
