When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is genuine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough to face it.

The following year Ava Gardner played her last great leading role in a superlative film The Night of the Iguana (1964) based upon a Tennessee Williams play and starring Richard Burton as an atheist clergyman and Deborah Kerr as a gentle artist traveling with her aged poet grandfather. He did not attempt to record her voice because her Southern accent made it almost impossible for him to understand her. When Gardner was seven years old the family decided to try their luck in a larger city Newport News Virginia where Mollie Gardner found work managing a boarding house for the city's many shipworkers.

She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Mogambo (1953). She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses considered one of the most beautiful women of her day. She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's Greatest female stars.