For the first part of my career, I did what I was told, and I wasn't getting anywhere. I'd get in such a state when I was asked to do something, and it didn't feel right, and I'd end up feeling that I wasn't very good.
If someone, a director, tries to tell me the way to do something, I'm not good at adapting. I need time to go away and think about things.
Maybe I'll get into a Bond film... I always thought I'd be a Bond Girl when I was young.
I get very spiky if people treat me like an old lady.
I'm sick of it when people start to say it: 'Aren't you amazing?' If they start to say it, I hit them.
I'm past it now - love. I can't imagine it happening again.
I don't think I've ever been lonely in my entire life. I love to shut my front door and be on my own.
You can wear yourself out by saying yes to things you don't want to do, and nobody really minds if you say no. I enjoy my own company. I'm never at a loss for things to do.
I don't ever think of myself as coming from a particular class because my father was working class but made his living as a newspaper foreign correspondent - someone of no fixed abode, as he used to say - who was as comfortable dining with the Mountbattens in India as he was having a pint with the boys. He was very gregarious.
My parents were adorable. They were very kind, and very broad-minded compared to people of their generation.
My father fought in the war, and then he was posted all 'round the world with his job. So I didn't know him very well when I was young.
I like waking up in the morning and thinking, 'Mmm, I might go to Paris today.' I don't want to ask anyone if they want to come with me or mind me going. I like being my own agent. I have my grandsons and son. If I didn't have them, it would be different.
I'm terribly happy at the moment - someone up there must be looking out for me.
My teacher at RADA said I was going to have trouble when I left because I wasn't an obvious juvenile lead, although I could do both comedy and drama. But I understood enough to know that my career was going to be a marathon, not a sprint.
I used to lie in bed and imagine I was performing at the Albert Hall, not that I'd ever been there. I took lessons with a German teacher when I was quite young. But it turned out I had a very high soprano voice, which I didn't like at all.
The British tend to be uptight; they shy away from being tactile.
