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| "Face to face, though, she was one of the most charming people I've ever met. Apart from the fact that she was lovely to look at, she had a radiant smile and a completely unaffected simplicity; she was a delightful girl, she really was. And even after she leapt to fame, she was quite unchanged. She came back to Orange Hill and saw productions and went round backstage and congratulated us all and was the same engaging Jean that we had known at school." |
| - Pamela Maxfield, Orange Hill schoolmate |
| "I had a chance work with Jean Simmons, who was in the role of [Désirée]. She was winning, charming, beautiful, and experienced and we had fun together. Unfortunately, she was married to Stewart Granger, the great white hunter." |
| - Marlon Brando, from "Songs My Mother Taught Me" |
| "In 1947, then, I made a film of Hamlet. It could well be left at that, but there are credits; others contributed vitally to it. …The cast was remarkable: Basil Sydney as the King, Felix Aylmer as Polonius, Normal Woolland as Horatio, Terence Morgan as Laertes, Peter Cushing as Osric. That beautiful actress Eileen Herlie played the Queen and a ravishing eighteen-year-old, Jean Simmons, was Ophelia." |
| - Sir Laurence Olivier, from "Confessions of an Actor" |
| "Self-possessed and beautiful British leading lady who married Stewart Granger (later Richard Brooks) and settled in Hollywood to make films which have been generally unworthy of her talents." |
| - Halliwell's Who's WHO in the Movies |
| "She sits on a throne beautifully." |
| - Daryl F. Zanuck |
| "I knew Jean Simmons when I was a boy of 15. We spent a summer in Venice, with my family, together. She was enchanting and already a star." |
| - Colin Clark, former Assistant to Laurence Olivier |
| "I had gone to Pinewood Studios to discuss a comedy they had in mind for me when I ran into a ravishing young beauty, Jean Simmons…She was guarded and protected wherever she went as the Rank boys didn't want any outside influence to enter her young life. I used to see her at film premiers, always accompanied by one of Rank's men, and give her an elaborate bow. Jean always responded to this joking gesture with a giggle and a furious blush." |
| - Stewart Granger, from "Sparks Fly Upward" |
| "I met her only once, years ago, when she was playing in a piece based on a book by Tolstoi, with her husband Stewart Granger. I was appearing in a Terrence Rottigan play called 'Adventure Story' - about Alexander the Great. She was very sweet I remember." |
| - Paul Scofield, from a letter to Ian Payne |
| "Among the ladies of my profession I highly respect is Jean Simmons. Not only is she extremely gifted, but what I find even more praiseworthy is the fact that she's managed to remain unaffected by the corrosive influences and the pitfalls of fame that have destroyed so many of her sister-actresses." |
| - Charleton Heston, from Michael Munn's biography of him |