British Actress Quotations

Feed the dogs. I hate to hear them barking like that.

We had a very energetic floor manager and he was always jumping around all over the place. The director would send down messages like, Can you tell that actor to calm down?

I'm not any good at foul language or anything like that.

Shyness is just egoism out of its depth.

All Bridget Jones did was give us a word for it - singleton - which was the worst possible thing.

The trouble with being a hypochondriac these days is that antibiotics have cured all the good diseases.

Working for a federal agency was like trying to dislodge a prune skin from the roof of the mouth. More enterprise went into the job than could be justified by the results.

And maybe that's being the third child, although my entire family are very resilient - very, very resilient.

Female television viewers paid attention to Catherine Gale.

Working together was a bit of a disaster. I'd tell him his ideas were cr*p and he'd say the same about mine.

I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.

I got very fit that week with all the running around that we di. I was always last, because I can't run as fast as everyone else. I'm useless at running.

I'm not the kind of actress that goes home with the character. I mean, you're thinking about the work or the next day's scenes, but not staying in character. But as a film goes on, you become more and more fragile, emotionally. And physically too, actually.

There have been plenty of very bare hotels with couples humping next door. I don't stay in very grand hotels.

I'm not up on today's television for children, because it's mostly cartoons that don't seem to interest me.

I am being accused of all this plastic surgery, which is absolutely not true.

I found it a little bit stressful, because I wasn't used to working with Doctor Who. I got the impression I'd walked into the end of seven years and it was all a bit tense.

I pitched my last children's show presentation in the mid 1980's. The era of locally produced children's shows was over and the networks were not and are not interested in children's television.

I came over when I was 10 years old, which was very difficult because everybody made fun of me.

In the sequence where I am burned at the stake, everything was so casual and hazardous that the bottom of my dress caught fire, and the grips became hysterical as they tried to pull me off the stake.

In fact, I'll be taking a lot of Cathy Gale with me. I expect that was why I was chosen for the part.

I would not have done much differently, but I would have loved to have done everything better. The truth is, I think I was just getting warmed up when the era ended.

I think I must have too much to eat, we were doing a scene where we were crawling, and I ripped my trousers. I was very embarrassed. I was sown in, stitched in, quickly!

What is not fair now is that corporations pay less and less tax, which means that you and I pay more because we're rooted somewhere, they've got our address, right?

I knew that for this movie to work it had to be very hot and very real, and it wasn't going to be a case of doing it Hollywood all covered with a nice little sheet.

I told them I wouldn't sign a blank cheque.

The degree that these scenes went to... there was a couple of days I was upset... I'd have to hurry back to the girls in the makeup trailer and have a bit of a cry because it messes with your head.

And I also am very nervous about implants. You know, I'm just nervous about all that. So I could still do it. I could think about it. But I needed to adapt to myself.

Really, in a way, I took over the male role.

Playing an alien gave me plenty of scope, and I was able to develop it once I became a member of the team.

I shall fulfill my contract, no more nor less.

I don't think I would have stayed for the second season if I hadn't been happy.

I think we probably will end up in America because he would be giving up much more to come and live here. If you want to work in film, that's really where you have to be. But I'm not sure that being an ex-pat is very good for one's sense of self.

Said I was beautiful, did he? He's being paid for treatment, not flattery.

I enjoyed working with Peter, I was very pleased when I heard he was going to be the Doctor.

And I really also wanted to have the full-body scans to learn if it was anywhere else - and it wasn't - before I told them. So I didn't tell them, until for a week, and then I told them.

Some of those cartoons look nothing like me.

I'm not afraid. I never liked long last acts.

There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk.

Working with Daddy - it's sort of like playing tennis against somebody, instead of just hitting them into a hedge where they sort of go in, you know.

Women should be freer to say, 'I have a friend with the most amazing life, so interesting, and she says in a sad, little voice, 'Everyone's getting married.''

This profession is very tough and not many people make it, and even if you do, then you can still get slapped in the face constantly.

When I came back to Britain, I realized that I was no longer a very young woman. I had to meet my new consciousness, my new age, with roles that reflected it somewhat.

We were both from the north,' she says. 'We cut to the quick and didn't take any rubbish. And besides, there's the fact that he did love me.

Me and my married friends catch ourselves going, 'Oh, thank God we haven't been left on the shelf for ever,' because that is now the ultimate fear.

I got it out of my system fairly early, when, thank God, the clubs all started diluting. From what I've heard the clubs have changed a lot.

I didn't want to throw like an actress.

I don't enjoy the life of an actress, but I don't want to go into that.

I'd like to write a novel more than anything. I'm reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles at the moment, which is depressing me no end!

I'd be hopeless at directing. I'm not the type. You've got to really know what you're doing and be quite controlling. It's a very lonely job.

I collaborated on most of my dance numbers, literally 50/50, with the choreographers I worked with.

I'm at a very different age. I'm no longer building my career as Sarah Jessica is. I've got it. And they can't take it away from me.

I have a Calvin Klein travel handbag with four compartments that fold up. You can keep your tickets, passport and documents all together.

I feel that David took a risk with me. I have a sense that by starting off in the theatre and going off to do films you are seen to sell out in some way. I don't hold truck with that, but you can't stop people from feeling it.

I found it all very scary. This fairytale gets built around you - as if you've been walking through the streets and then Sydney Pollack sees you and goes, 'I'll put you in something!'

I enjoy the crafts on the show enormously, too, when we have experts in showing how to make things. You watch them thinking you'll go home and do the things yourself, which is fun. Some I have done myself later on.

Having done lifestyle books and being an actress, I suppose it made sense to bring the two together. I think that's what happened.

Having cakes as a business certainly changes things for me-I don't now sit at home doing a cake for the fun of it anymore. But it's an extremely happy and pleasureable business to run because people are generally buying cakes for celebrations.

I think you tend to try, during the time you've got off, to forget about the film. It was such a total world. I mean, the sets were claustrophobic, and as soon as you were on there, you were right back into it.

I was a complete loon, but I don't regret a bit of it.

Relatives cannot help you in the studios," she says. "You stand or fall by your own efforts.

Markets can't think about anything beyond about three months. This is very long-term for markets, which is why the important things in life have got to be taken outside of the marketplace.

When I first began, the technicians, camera and makeup men made me feel so self-conscious that I began to have the biggest inferiority complex about my looks.

Yes, well, you are quite camp, so I guess that he could see the point of you.

The other girls used to blame me whenever they got caught for something, so all the parents wrote in and said they didn't want me at the school.

This was unimaginable to me, that one could actually have a great time making a film, that it could be a blast despite the medieval solemnity.

You can hold tight to a character and say, This is mine, or you can just kind of say, Hey, you know what? This is the next generation.

Victor Saville used to say to me, Darling, you look beautiful. With his magic and the lighting there was no doubt about it, I looked beautiful!

There's lots of interesting jobs in the profession besides acting, and I like to try and keep an eye on and understand other people's jobs, rather than just my own.

I've been doing Pride and Prejudice all summer, so suddenly the chance to be holed up with a bunch of marines is quite attractive, and probably a necessary dose of male energy.

I've been playing music since I was 12 and I like to play in a band. It takes the place of theatre for me, the live performance element.

I've worked with Bob Hoskins three times. We all talk the same language in a way. We just had a laugh and tried to keep things light.

I've spent my life pursing excellence as an artist, which is what I always wanted to do anyhow.

It was tremendous fun while it lasted, but I didn't want to get into a rut, and I think there was the danger of this, had I continued.

The songwriters were introduced to me as ordinary human beings; they would play their songs, and sometimes I would start to sing a song with them.

I've never done a film in Los Angeles, so I don't know what that would be like - that experience of working in a big studio. I can't imagine... yet.

I used to go to raves, but I was never into the whistles and white gloves.

I wanted to go out and experience the fields.

The old argument that the working class won't enter higher education because they are afraid of getting into debt is patronizing.

Some stories are more technical than others and more difficult to do. You just have to stick with it and hope it all works out in the end.

You've got to sing sometimes like you don't need the money. Love sometimes like you'll never get hurt. You've got to dance, dance, dance like nobody's watching. It's got to come from the heart if you want it to work.

They put me in this room with bars on the windows to punish me. I was stuck in there for a whole week with just a rosary for comfort.

Altman works in such an interesting way, letting things occur in the film even if he didn't particularly plan them.

There isn't any woman who doesn't look every day and minute of her age. We can't be, nor look, younger than we are, but we can be well preserved.

There's also something of an illusion in that, you can perhaps record a TV thing one month and complete a book the next and then be in a play. Then, if they all come out at once, it looks as if you're actually juggling a million things.

It's a confusing heritage. I never know if I want to be running across the fields with no clothes on or sitting in the pub drinking Guinness.

For a London play, rehearsal time would be four weeks for the entire show. In films, I'd spend six weeks on the big dance numbers to get them perfect before the actual shooting.

It's like finding oneself amongst friends. People look at you as if they like you. That is, until they actually get to know you.

The odd thing is if you asked me to do the accent now I would find it very difficult unless I was also playing that part, because I associate it so much with entering into the role and stepping into someone else's shoes.

The odd thing for me is the focus on looks which happened in the States. I'd always felt that was not going to be a strong point.

That made me feel very disturbed, because it never seemed to be about how much hard work was involved. Ever. It was about... 'hazel eyes'. It does help if you can brush that stuff off.

It's so difficult to get a film financed and I'm not a huge name. I'm not Nicole Kidman. The chances of this coming my way were very slim.

It was always the girls who were not put in school because you try to educate the boy because he might be more valuable to the family in the future.

I've got another film that I'm doing in a couple of months' time, but I can't talk about it until it's all signed, sealed and delivered.

Nothing makes you feel that you've overstayed your welcome like a flower arrangement that has withered and died.

I hope there's a tinge of disgrace about me. Hopefully, there's one good scandal left in me yet.

I made a bit of a stink. At the time, it was considered very bad form.

In films, the fact that you can always do a scene again takes a load off your mind, enabling you to strive for perfection, which I always wanted.

I know there was uproar when I moved out of my fairy skirt, as I used to call it, into my trousers. That was purely for practical reasons!

I have never subscribed to authoritarianism, and I think if the 21st century is going to be authoritarian then we're all done for.