"We'll be out to lunch and Heather will say, 'Yes, I'd like fried zucchini circles with ranch.' And I'll be having a tuna salad with fat-free dressing. I hate her."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith joking about her castmate, quoted in TV Guide, 1994
"On Melrose Place we have tons of problems, but most of them seem pretty self-created. My friends in their twenties are trying to take control of their lives. On Melrose Place, we just kind of let things happen to us."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith from The Official MP Companion, 1995
"There's nobody I don't like. Maybe in six years it will be different."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith on relations with her new MP castmembers, quoted in USA Today, 1992
"If she doesn't get some very comprehensive therapy, she'll be doing the exact same thing. She's just the queen of doing the same thing but expecting different results. Absolute insanity."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith on Alison, quoted from The Official Melrose Place Companion, 1995
"We were just eight good kids trying to make it. As a sitcom, that might have been great, but we were supposed to be a drama. Then Amanda and Sydney arrived and created conflict. Now you can root for the good guys and still get off on all the bad guys at the same time."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith on MP's struggling early 1st season, quoted from The Official Melrose Place Companion, 1995
"The most fun I had was when Alison was drunk. I had a blast being able to be strong, loud, and obnoxious because Alison always has to pull back and be sweet in the end. Thos were five fun episodes."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith on her fave MP episodes, quoted from The Official Melrose Place Companion, 1995
"We were two nice kids under this incredible stress. I don't know if I could have gotten through it without him. We had a light, fun, sweet relationship. We'll always have a close bond. Ask me when one of us gets married. That'll be hard."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith on her romance with MP's Andrew Shue during the first MP season, 1994
"It's been overwhelmingly positive. There's financial security, and a great place for me to come to work. The crew is amazing, the cast is great, which is rare. I also like the consistency. To be an actor and able to to say, 'I'm going to work today,' is weird and wonderful."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith on how MP has changed her life, quoted from The Official Melrose Place Companion, 1995
"Take no responsibility and sleep with it."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith summing up the Melrose Place philosophy, quoted from The Official Melrose Place Companion, 1995
"Testing out the services of a private masseur/ex-firefighter with a name like Sven."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith's response when asked by SELF magazine what her dream assignment [for SELF magazine] would be, 2001
"I would start the day with my favorite yoga class at 7:15 am, then I would come home for a long bath before heading off with my best girlfriends (many of whom are pregnant�more about that later!) to our favorite day spa, Burke Williams, for massages and facials, followed by a late, laughter filled lunch. Then, of course, it is off to L'Atelier, my knitting store, ostensibly to buy yarn for the many baby blankets I need to finish in the next few months, but where I will, in fact, spend far too much time fondling the skeins of cashmere, like some sort of sad yarn pervert."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith, SELF contributing editor, April 2001
"I don't even have to learn any new names. It's like the universe said, 'She's a little tired, let's not confuse her'."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith's on being married to a character named Billy in both Melrose Place and Ally McBeal, quoted in NW magazine, 1998
"Before I met my boyfriend, my sister and I wrote down a list of 100 qualities we wanted in a man. A few weeks later, I was set up with my boyfriend, and, of course, I was thinking about the list. He met every criteria except one. My idea of a romantic night is to watch action films. The first week we were dating, he said, 'Want to go see Sense and Sensibility?' I thought, "Oh no, not one of those really sensitive guys!'"
---Courtney Thorne-Smith's on men and movies, 1996
"When I'm feeling sorry for myself, I'll eat Lucky Charms cereal. I like having sugar when I'm in that mood."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith's sugar confession, 1997
"It's never too late to start your modeling career. I really would like to think of myself as someone who can go without makeup, but I'm not comfortable [without it] because I wear it all week and I get used to looking that way. On weekends I hate to be so disappointed."
---Courtney Thorne-Smith as the new spokeswoman for Almay Cosmetics, quoted in People Magazine, April 26, 1999
"I think they'll be a little like Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith. I think they'll break up and make up and break up and make up. I see them being married at least three times."
---Aaron Spelling on Billy and Alison, quoted from The Official Melrose Place Companion, 1995
"I'd have to say that my favorite Melrose Place character was always Courtney Thorne-Smith as Alison. She was clearly drawn by the writers as the good girl from the Midwest, but she in fact came off as the single scariest, meanest, most manipulative woman in all of television. I just love the way that she makes absolutely everything a huge drama. It made my skin crawl every time she'd come home and tell Billy that they "had to talk." It seemed like the writers on the show thought she was one of the more stable ones in the building, but to me she's the woman character on the show I would most want to warn my male friends to stay away from. Sydney's a much safer bet. Alison was truly frightening, and of course it was her persona I'd take on at the Melrose parties."
---Julia Sweeney, comedienne and actress, quoted from The Official Melrose Place Companion, 1995
"Seven finalists competed for the role of Alison, but Courtney just knocked us on our butts with her reading. Since then, she's proven to be a workaholic. She'll do anything that's asked of her. She came in on a Saturday, dead tired after a long week, to read with the actors who came in when we were recasting Billy. Then after that she had to go do a photo shoot. I think this one is going to be a star."
---Aaron Spelling on casting Courtney as Alison, quoted in the book, "Melrose Place Off the Record," 1993
"We were looking for someone who's smart, attractive, and charming, with a lot of depth. Definitely, Courtney was right on the money. She's a very light personality, very "up," really engaging to be around. In person, she's not Alison. She's loose and relaxed, not uptight at all. She's definitely playing a character."
---Darren Star on casting Courtney as Alison, quoted in the book, "Melrose Place Off the Record," 1993
"To my mind," he muses, "the show paints Billy and Georgia as so conservative, almost older than their years in the way they do everything. What's so funny is that Courtney and I keep trying to infuse a sense of joy into their relationship, but those little moments rarely seem to get put into the final show."
---Gil Bellows on Billy and Georgia, TV Guide November 28, 1998
"I've been on one blind date in my whole life," said Roger Lodge, who's guest-hosted Talk Soup and reported for Hard Copy. ``It was with a great girl...Courtney Thorne-Smith before she went on Melrose Place."
---Roger Lodge's (host of the tv show, Blind Date) response when asked what his blind dates had been like, quoted in The Beacon Journal, July 16, 1999
"When he [Andrew Shue] auditioned in producer Aaron Spelling's home, however, Shue recalls looking over "and [Courtney] was wearing these tight black jeans. The first thing out of my mouth was, 'This isn't going to be tough.'"
---Andrew Shue on meeting Courtney during the Melrose Place audition, quoted in EW Magazine, 1993
According to Gil Bellows, the Ally McBeal cast is "a pretty united bunch," with Thorne-Smith "the wittiest by a mile." "She [Courtney] has a perfect Canadian sense of humour. She's dry, fast and understands how to put verbal and visual images together in a very funny fashion."
---Gil Bellows on Courtney Thorne-Smith, TV Week January 15-21, 1999
"Courtney was a natural choice. And I've always been a fan of her work. We actually worked together way back on L.A. Law."
---David E. Kelley on choosing Courtney Thorne-Smith as Georgia on Ally McBeal, TV Week December 13-19, 1997
"Aside from her sexuality, which is obvious, Courtney exudes a certain strength as a woman."
---David E. Kelley explanation of Courtney Thorne-Smith's attractiveness, EW Magazine, September 19, 1997
"I was watching Courtney [Thorne-Smith], and I just love that woman. She was in this really extreme scene and it was so on-the money and so beautifully done."
---Frank South, co-executive producer and writer of Melrose Place, Soap Opera Stars Magazine May 1995
