Jean Simmons -Never be afraid to fail. Every time you get up in the morning, you are ahead.

It may be simplistic, but you could sum up my two marriages by saying that, when I wanted to be a wife, Jimmy [Stewart Granger] would say: 'I just want you to be pretty.' And when I wanted to cook, Richard would say: 'Forget the cooking. You've been trained to act – so act!' Most people thought I was helpless – a clinger and a butterfly – during my first marriage. It was Richard Brooks who saw what was wrong and tried to make me stand on my own two feet. I'd whine: 'I'm afraid.' And he'd say: 'Never be afraid to fail. Every time you get up in the morning, you are ahead.'

Her Hollywood career was more prolific than distinguished. She possessed the cool English reserve that intrigues many Americans. With few outward signs of inward passion, she represented a mystery and a challenge. Many English actresses, from Deborah Kerr to Julie Andrews, have enjoyed long and profitable careers by exploiting that very uncertainty. These actresses were so genteel that Hollywood felt instinctively that they must be treated as queens or virgins. For her part, Jean Simmons certainly was — several times. She played the future Virgin Queen in Young Bess (1953) and a Salvation Army lass in Guys and Dolls (1955).
And yet, underlying these whiter-than-white roles, there were sneaking suspicions. Could she really be so spotless? Might not there be skeletons lurking in the Simmons cupboard? In her private life, there was plenty to raise late-1940s eyebrows. Stewart Granger, who was to become her first husband, was still married to Elspeth March when they first associated off-screen.
For many years, Hollywood was unsure how to cast her. Should it play to her traditional image as a patrician? It did so in such films as The Robe (1953) and Désirée (1954), as a high-born aristocrat opposite Marlon Brando’s Napoleon. Or should it hint at hidden depths? Angel Face (1953) and The Many Loves of Hilda Crane (1956) leant in that direction.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/7061131/Jean-Simmons.html