19 Best Dramatic Monologues For Women From Movies
1. Steel Magnolias
A monologue from the screenplay by Robert Harling
M’Lynn
(talking, through tears, about the last minutes with Shelby) I stayed there. I kept on pushing…just like I always have where Shelby was concerned…hoping she‟d sit up and argue with me.
But finally we all realized there was no hope. At that point I panicked. I was afraid that I wouldn’t survive the next few minutes while they turned off the machines.
Drum couldn‟t take it. He left. Jackson couldn’t take it. He left. It struck me as amusing. Men are supposed to be made of steel or something.
But I couldn’t leave. I just sat there holding Shelby‟s hand while the sounds got softer and the beeps got farther apart until all was quiet.
There was no noise, no tremble. Just peace. I realized as a woman how lucky I was.
I was there when this wonderful person drifted into this world, and I was there when she drifted out.
It was the most precious moment of my life so far.
2. V For Vendetta
A monologue from the screenplay by the Wachowskis
VALERIE
I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like “collateral” and “rendition” became frightening…
while things like “Norsefire” and the “Articles of Allegiance” became powerful. I remember how “different” became dangerous.
I still don’t understand it. Why they hate us so much.
They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I’ve never cried so hard in my life. It wasn’t long till they came for me.
It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologised to no-one.
I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch but one. An inch – it is small and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having.
We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that, whoever you are, you escape this place.
I hope that the world turns and that things get better.
But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you,
and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you. Valerie.
3. Requiem For A Dream
A monologue from the screenplay by Hubert Selby Jr. & Darren Aronofsky
SARA GOLDFARB
I’m somebody now, Harry. Everybody likes me. Soon, millions of people will see me and they’ll all like me.
I’ll tell them about you, and your father, how good he was to us. Remember?
It’s a reason to get up in the morning. It’s a reason to lose weight, to fit in the red dress. It’s a reason to smile.
It makes tomorrow all right. What have I got Harry, hmm?
Why should I even make the bed, or wash the dishes? I do them, but why should I? I’m alone. Your father’s gone, you’re gone.
I got no one to care for. What have I got, Harry? I’m lonely.
I’m old. Ah, it’s not the same. They don’t need me. I like the way I feel. I like thinking about the red dress and the television and you and your father.
Now when I get the sun, I smile.
4. Network
A monologue from the screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky
LOUISE SCHUMACHER
Then get out. Go anywhere you want. Go to a hotel, go live with her, but don’t come back!
Because, after 25 years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other,
I’m damned if I’m gonna stand here and have you tell me you’re in love with somebody else! Because this isn’t a convention weekend with your secretary, is it?
Or, or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn’t it?
Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what’s left for me? Is that my share?
She gets the winter passion and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do?
Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I’m your wife, damn it!
And if you can’t work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance! …
I hurt, don’t you understand that? I hurt badly!
5. The Godfather Part 2
A monologue from the screenplay by Mario Puzo & Francis Ford Coppola
KAY CORLEONE
Oh, Michael. Michael, you are blind. It wasn’t a miscarriage. It was an abortion. An abortion, Michael.
Just like our marriage is an abortion. Something that’s unholy and evil. I didn’t want your son, Michael!
I wouldn’t bring another one of you sons into this world! It was an abortion, Michael! It was a son Michael! A son!
And I had it killed because this must all end! I know now that it’s over. I knew it then.
There would be no way, Michael… no way you could ever forgive me not with this Sicilian thing that’s been going on for 2,000 years.
6. Sideways
A monologue from the screenplay by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor
MAYA
I like to think about the life of wine. How it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing;
how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes.
And if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now.
I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I’d opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive.
And it’s constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your ’61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline.
And it tastes so f***ing good.
7. Changing Lanes
A monologue from the screenplay by Chap Taylor & Michael Tolkin
CYNTHIA
I could have married an honest man.
I could’ve lived with a professor of Middle English, for example, if he was a moral man and had tenure at Princeton.
But I didn’t. I married a Wall Street lawyer.
Which means I married someone who lives in a world where, when a man comes to the edge of things, he has to commit to staying there and living there.
Can you live there, Gavin? Can you live there with me? You’re not gonna do anything stupid like leaving me.
You’ve had fantasies, I’m sure; so have I, but we’re married. I knew about Michelle. I knew when it was happening, and I knew when it was finished.
And I know you love me. You do love me, and I love you, too. I’m your wife, and I wanna stand beside you.
Just let me help you, Gavin. Let me help you with this.”
8. Contact
A monologue from the screenplay by James V. Hart & Michael Goldenberg
ELLIE ARROWAY
Because I can’t. I… had an experience… I can’t prove it, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real!
I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever… A vision… of the universe, that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how… rare, and precious we all are!
A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater then ourselves, that we are *not*, that none of us are alone!
I wish… I… could share that… I wish, that everyone, if only for one… moment, could feel… that awe, and humility, and hope.
But… That continues to be my wish.
9. Interiors
A monologue from the screenplay by Woody Allen
RENATA
My impotence set in a year ago. My paralysis. I suddenly found I couldn’t write any more. Rather, I shouldn’t say suddenly.
Actually, it started happening last winter. Increasing thoughts about death just seemed to come over me.
Um, these, uh… A preoccupation with my own mortality. These… feelings of futility in relation to my work.
I mean, just what am I striving to create anyway? I mean, to what end? For what purpose, what goal?
I mean… Do I really care if a handful of my poems are read after I’m gone? Is that supposed to be some sort of compensation?
I used to think it was, but… now, for some reason… I can’t…
I can’t seem to… I can’t seem to shake the real implication of dying. It’s terrifying. intimacy of it embarrasses me.
10. Before Sunset
A monologue from the screenplay by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, & Ethan Hawke
CELINE
I was fine, until I read your f***ing book! It stirred sh*t up, you know?
It reminded me how genuinely romantic I was, how I had so much hope in things, and now it’s like, I don’t believe in anything that relates to love.
I don’t feel things for people anymore. In a way, I put all my romanticism into that one night, and I was never able to feel all this again.
Like, somehow this night took things away from me and I expressed them to you, and you took them with you!
It made me feel cold, like if love wasn’t for me!…
You know what? Reality and love are almost contradictory for me. It’s funny. Every single of my ex’s, they’re now married!
Men go out with me, we break up, and then they get married!
And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is, and, and that I taught them to care and respect women!…
You know, I want to kill them! Why didn’t they ask me to marry them?
I would have said “No,” but at least they could have asked!! But it’s my fault, I know it’s my fault, because I never felt it was the right man. Never!
But what does it mean the right man? The love of your life?
The concept is absurd. The idea that we can only be complete with another person is evil! Right?!…
You know, I guess I’ve been heart-broken too many times. And then I recovered.
So now, you know, from the start I make no effort because I know it’s not going to work out, I know it’s not going to work out.
11. Little Women
A monologue from the screenplay by Greta Gerwig
AMY MARCH
I’ve always known I would marry rich. Why should I be ashamed of that? Well, I believe we have some power over who we love, it isn’t something that just happens to a person.
Well. I’m not a poet, I’m just a woman. And as a woman I have no way to make money, not enough to earn a living and support my family.
Even if I had my own money, which I don’t, it would belong to my husband the minute we were married.
If we had children they would belong to him, not me. They would be his property.
So don’t sit there and tell me that marriage isn’t an economic proposition, because it is. It may not be for you but it most certainly is for me.
12. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
A monologue from the screenplay by James Cameron
SARAH CONNOR
The hardest thing is deciding what I should tell you and what not to. Well, anyway, I’ve got a while yet before you’re old enough to understand the tapes.
They’re more for me at this point… to help get it all straight. Should I tell you about your father? That’s a tough one.
Will it change your decision to send him here… knowing? But if you don’t send Kyle, you could never be.
God, you can go crazy thinking about all this…
I suppose I’ll tell you… I owe him that. And maybe it’ll be enough if you know that in the few hours we had together we loved a lifetime’s worth.
13. Monster
A monologue from the screenplay by Patty Jenkins
EILEEN
I always wanted to be in the movies. When I was little, I thought for sure that one day I was gonna be a big, big star.
Or maybe just beautiful. Beautiful and rich. Like the women on TV.
Yeah, I had a lot of dreams. And I guess you could call me a real romantic ’cause I truly believed that one day, they’d come true.
So I dreamed about it for hours. (pause) As the years went by, I learned to stop sharing this with people.
They said I was dreaming, but back then, I believed it wholeheartedly.
So whenever I was down, I would just escape into my mind, to my other life, where I was someone else.
It made me happy to think that all these people just didn’t know yet who I was going to be. But one day, they’d all see.
I heard that Marilyn Monroe was discovered in a soda shop and I thought for sure it could be like that.
So I started going out real young and I was always secretly looking for who was going to discover me. Was it this guy?
Or maybe this one. I never knew. But even if they couldn’t take me all the way, like Marilyn, they would somehow believe in me just enough.
They would see me for what I could be and think I was beautiful. Like a diamond in the rough.
They would take me away to my new life… and my new world… where everything would be different.
Yeah. I lived that way for a long, long time. In my head, dreaming like that. It was nice. (Pause) And one day, it just stopped.
14. Eyes Wide Shut
A monologue from the screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Frederic Raphael
ALICE HARFORD
Do you remember last summer at Cape Cod?
Do you remember one night in the dining room, there was this young naval officer and he was sitting near our table with two other officers?
The waiter brought him a message during dinner, at which point he left, nothing rings a bell? Well, I first saw him that morning in the lobby.
He was checking into the hotel and he was following the bellboy with his luggage to the elevator.
He glanced at me as he walked past, just a glance, nothing more. And I could hardly move.
That afternoon Helena went to the movie with her friend and you and I made love and we made plans about our future
and we talked about Helena and yet at no time was he ever out of my mind.
And I thought that if he wanted me, even if it was only for one night, I was ready to give up everything. You, Helena, my whole f***ing future, everything.
And yet it was weird because at the same time, you were dearer to me than ever, and at that moment my love for you was both tender and sad.
I barely slept that night. I woke up the next morning in a panic. I don’t know if I was afraid that he had left or that he might still be there.
But by dinner I realized he was gone. And I was relieved.
15. Mona Lisa Smile
A monologue from the screenplay by Lawrence Konner & Mark Rosenthal
KATHERINE WATSON
“Quiet. Today you just listen. What will future scholars see when they study us, a portrait of women today?
There you are ladies: the perfect likeness of a Wellesley graduate, Magna Cum Laude, doing exactly what she was trained to do. Slide.
A Rhodes Scholar, I wonder if she recites Chaucer while she presses her husband’s shirts. Slide.
Now you physics majors can calculate the mass and volume of every meatloaf you make. Slide.
A girdle to set you free. What does that mean? What does that mean? What does it mean? I give up, you win.
The smartest women in the country… I didn’t realize that by demanding excellence I would be challenging… what did it say?
What did it say? Um… the roles you were born to fill. Is that right? The roles you were born to fill? It’s, uh, it’s my mistake. Class dismissed.”
16. Stoker
A monologue from the screenplay by Wentworth Miller (Ted Foulke)
EVELYN STOKER
You know, I’ve often wondered why it is we have children in the first place. And the conclusion I’ve come to is…
At some point in our lives we realize things are screwed up beyond repair. So we decide to start again. Wipe the slate clean. Start fresh.
And then we have children. Little carbon copies we can turn to and say, “You will do what I could not. You will succeed where I have failed.”
Because we want someone to get it right this time. But not me… Personally speaking I can’t wait to watch life tear you apart. India who are you?
You were supposed to love me weren’t you?
17. Dangerous Beauty
A monologue from the screenplay by Jeannine Dominy
VERONICA FRANCO
I confess that as a young girl I loved a man who would not marry me for want of a dowry.
I confess I had a mother who taught me a different way of life, one I resisted at first but learned to embrace.
I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one…
I confess I embraced a whore’s freedom over a wife’s obedience… I confess I find more ecstacy in passion than in prayer.
Such passion is prayer. I confess – I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover’s lips, his hands upon me, his arms enfolding me…
Such surrender has been mine. I confess I hunger still to be filled and enflamed. To melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves.
To know that always, always, this is mine… If this had not been mine –
if I had lived any other way – a child to her husband’s whim, my soul hardened from lack of touch and lack of love.
I confess such endless days and nights would be a punishment far greater than you could ever mete out…
You, all of you, you who hunger so for what I give but cannot bear to see that kind of power in a woman.
You call God’s greatest gift: our selves, our yearning, our need to love – you call it filth and sin and heresy…
I repent there was no other way open to me. I do not repent my life.
18. The Queen
A monologue from the screenplay by Peter Morgan
THE QUEEN
Their grief? If you imagine I’m going to drop everything and come down to London before I attend to my grandchildren who’ve just lost their mother, then you’re mistaken.
I doubt there is anyone who knows the British people more than I do, Mr. Blair, nor who has greater faith in their wisdom and judgment.
And it is my belief that they will any moment reject this, this mood, which is being stirred up by the press, in favor of a period of restrained grief and sober, private mourning.
That’s the way we do things in this country, quietly, with dignity. That’s what the rest of the world has always admired us for.
19. Million Dollar Baby
A monologue from the screenplay by Paul Haggis
MAGGIE FITZGERALD 1
I’m 32, Mr. Dunn, and I’m here celebratin’ the fact that I spent another year scrapin’ dishes and waitressin’ which is what I’ve been doin’ since 13.
And according to you, I’ll be 37 before I can even throw a decent punch, which I have to admit, after workin’ on this speed bag for a month may be the God’s simple truth.
Other truth is, my brother’s in prison, my sister cheats on welfare by pretendin’ one of her babies is still alive, my daddy’s dead, and my momma weighs 312 pounds.
If I was thinkin’ straight, I’d go back home, find a used trailer, buy a deep fryer and some Oreos.
Problem is, this is the only thing I ever felt good doin’. If I’m too old for this, then I got nothin’. That enough truth to suit you?
MAGGIE FITZGERALD 2
I can’t be like this, Frankie. Not after what I’ve done. I’ve seen the world. People chanted my name.
Well, not my name… some damn name you gave me. But they were chanting for me. I was in magazines. You think I ever dreamed that’d happen?
I was born two pounds, one-and-a-half ounces. Daddy used to tell me I’d fight my way into this world, and I’d fight my way out.
That’s all I wanna do, Frankie. I just don’t wanna fight you to do it. I got what I needed. I got it all.
Don’t let ’em keep taking it away from me. Don’t let me lie here ’till I can’t hear those people chanting no more.
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