I don't believe in public humiliation. It went out with the stocks.

We have this wonderful language and we don't appreciate it. That's old-fashioned me, but when I went to school, everyone had elocution lessons, not to sound posh but so you could be understood.

Shyness is just egotism out of its depth.

I plant a lot of trees. I am a great believer in planting things for future generations. I loathe the now culture where you just live for today.

I think I'm a better actress for having friends and interests outside the theatre. I wouldn't want to live my life surrounded by other actors all the time.

We always had chocolates and my mother was careful to make sure they were unwrapped in advance so the paper wouldn't rustle in the middle of a performance.

Older people, who just happen to have been around longer, may not be cleverer than the young, but they have seen more.

Everyone wants instant everything, and they want instant success, but I always think you should treat things in the arts like a garden, and let them grow.

I don't feel 'vibes' when I enter a building - don't feel the previous owners looking down on me. But I do know when a place feels friendly.

So often actors only mix with actors, which is quite incestuous, and doesn't give them the insight into how other people work.

With a play, you do it and it's gone. Films always date. Television drama always dates. Television comedy, for some reason, seems to go on.

From the very beginningperplexing and wanderingfrom one ocean to anotheran everlasting wander

You can assume all photo and video is constructed as a fiction controlled by the person holding the camera and the person who is editing.

Well, you may not know this, but there's things that gnaw at a man worse than dying.

We won with the military. We won with highly educated, pretty well educated and poorly educated. But we won with everything, tall people, short people, fat people, skinny people just won.

Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.

My personal view is always I'm in favour of anything that gives parliament a greater say. That's after all what we were elected for.

The second draft is on yellow paper, that's when I work on characterizations. The third is pink, I work on story motivations. Then blue, that's where I cut, cut, cut.

1974 meant big cuffs, bell-bottoms, platform shoes with two-tone colors, and body-conscious shirts.

You're always having to live more to fuel something new. It's an obligation to yourself and to the audience. The personal baggage that comes with being a known actor just adds to that struggle.

He is not guilty who is not guilty of his own free will.