Greta Garbo on the set of Flesh and the Devil (1926, dir. Clarence Brown)
“I am always nervous and restless when I am making a picture. I cannot help it. That is why I never want people to see me while I am acting. I do not let people on the set. And I stay by myself all I can while I am making a picture. I sit in one corner alone, or go to my dressing room, or I walk outside by myself while the others are working.
I cannot stand it for someone to come up and say, ‘What did you think of the football game?’ as they do here in America. I cannot get back on the track. I cannot do my best work then. It is the same with every picture – I tremble always, all over.”
-Greta Garbo, quoted in 1928 Photoplay interview (reprinted in Photoplay: the aristocrat of motion picture magazines, Vol. 34) (photo via)