Maggie Smith Quotes
I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.
I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.
I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything.
There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that.
Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.
An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.
It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.
I said 'It can't go on' and he said 'No, it can't.' Honestly, I don't think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him.
I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad.
We can't escape the shadow, so the best thing we can do is notice the light and be open to it.
I'm far, far, far from that. But of course, that's one of the joys of acting is that you can move up in the world, even if - you know, in the characters that you're playing, even if you don't.
People think of you differently if you've been in their homes. They think they own you because they watched you while they were eating dinner, or they can turn you up or down, or even freeze you.
The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.
I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.
My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.
Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but I came out on the side of light more often than not.
The drama school was in Oxford - and it's funny to think of it, but in those days when I started out the University was nearly all male. And they certainly weren't mixed.
The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them.
A lot of writing about being a mother is not so much writing about the kids themselves. They become placeholders for the shift that happens when you're suddenly in charge of other people.
If someone is going to talk about the process of making a film, it should be the director.
I'd done "Gosford Park," a film that Julian Fellowes had written that Robert Altman directed.
Where you get people who want to take a picture of you or take a picture of them with you.
There was nobody in the family who had ever done anything like that before. My brothers - I had two brothers. They were twins. They both became architects. They were both six years older.
The last couple of years have been a write-off, though I'm beginning to feel like a person now. My energy is coming back.
It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see…I can only hope that’s correct, because there’s an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others.
