What advice would Grace Kelly give about success and hard work?

I think — and I am speaking now from both sides of my life, from the soundstage and from the Palace — that the people who succeed at anything worth doing are the people who treat the work as the reward and the recognition as the by-product. Not the other way round.

My father — Jack Kelly — was a bricklayer's son who put himself through hard physical labour, won the Diamond Sculls at Henley after the British rowing establishment refused him entry because his hands were considered too rough, and built one of the largest construction firms in Philadelphia. He was not a sentimental man, my father. He believed that we children — Peggy, Kell, myself, Lizanne — owed the world a finished day's work and were not entitled to anything we had not earned ourselves. The boys had it slightly easier in his estimation. The girls were expected to be ornamental. I was, I think, a disappointment to him for a number of years because I insisted on being neither — I went to New York at eighteen with one suitcase and a single letter of introduction to the American Academy and I made my own way until High Noon, and even then I am not certain he believed I had a real profession.

What I would say to anyone beginning is — go where the work is hardest. Take the part the famous girl turned down. Take the supporting role with the great director rather than the leading role with the indifferent one. Hitchcock was Hitchcock; I would have played a footman for him and counted it the better day's work. Discipline yourself — vocally, physically, in your reading, in your attention. The talent is a small percentage of it. The remainder is showing up before the others, leaving after them, and never permitting yourself to believe the kind things the columnists print on a slow Tuesday.