I love not knowing what's going to happen next. With work, you never know. You rehearse and strive and get it right sometimes, and still you never know. Some people are like that with their marriages. They work and strive and labour and toil at them. God, what a bore! What an unromantic bore!
Anyone who goes on the stage is a show-off, aren't they? Acting's weird.
Mummy always wanted the five children, and she knew she couldn't look after them all because she was this absolutely glorious woman who loved going to parties and going to the races, and she just didn't have time.
I've made great friends through acting. When I'm with Victoria Wood and Julie Walters, we have grand fun. We can make each other howl with laughter because we know each other so well.
I'm a bit of a fraud, really, as I didn't study acting at a drama school.
I know if I had the chance of going aboard the Titanic in those days, I would have gone - I know I would have. I adore going on the Queen Mary - I think it's the only way to travel from New York.
I would do nearly anything for a laugh, to tell the truth. And I'm a particular favourite with young men with earrings.
Pat Phoenix kept that amazing sassy look. I always wonder, was that because she was thrilled with that look, and thought it looked marvellous, or was it because she was too scared to change it? It's a double thing. Security and insecurity.
I love Monet - I've nicknamed him King Blob. When you go up to the painting, it's a series of blobs - amazing.
I've had to spend an awful lot of my life trying to pretend I'm not posh. Although once I open my mouth, I rather let things out the bag.
I left school the day I turned 16, the earliest day I legally could. Determined to follow a life on stage, preferably with some dance connection, I applied for and won a place at the local drama school. I was on my way.
If I ever married, I know I would dread the daily sound of the key in the door and the casual expectancy of 'Hello! I'm home!'
The thing about members of your family is that if you met them for the first time at a party, you might not bother to take their phone number, and yet something binds you.
Anorexia taught me to love life and to realise that starving yourself to death is a bloody waste of time. It's awful, and it hurts so many people around you. It's a terribly selfish thing to do.
There are actresses who've had expensive work done and look great, so I'm not holier-than-thou about it. But it wouldn't be for me, perhaps because I've already been in hospital and wouldn't want to volunteer myself for it again.
I have a horror of boring someone or, worse still, of someone boring me. I said to my mother when I was seven, 'But, Mums, if it was only my husband and me in the house together, what would we talk about?' I've never wanted to answer my own question, and doubt I'll bother now.
Living as an actor is rather like living life on the trapezes in a circus. Every time you jump on, you have to pray that, when the time comes for you to jump off, there is another trapeze swinging your way.
I watch people from the top of buses who don't know they're being watched. It's quite fascinating.
My mother Diana was a true-blue aristocrat, descended from William the Conqueror and listed in 'Burke's Peerage.' My father David, from a poor Scottish family, was a doctor.
While other girls swooned over The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I worshipped Rudolf Nureyev and Isadora Duncan.
