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... When I worked with Yves Montand, I became fascinated with the intellectual art of singing and acting. He had just come off a love affair with Marilyn Monroe. That fascinated me too, because I had heard so much about what went on with her when making Billy Wilder's films. I was also a great admirer of Simone Signoret. To be close to Yves meant learning more about Simone. We did My Geisha together. We shot it entirely in Japan, which was a culture none of us were familiar with. So we were each splashed up against a foreign environment, forcing us to cling together on the all-Japanese set in order to understand what was going on.

... I never saw Yves Montand when I played Paris. But he did send me flowers with a card saying "from one legend to another."

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