Quotes

I'm not the sort of woman men boast of having slept with.

As you certainly know, Queen Victoria did not believe in lesbianism. So that was why it was never a criminal offense, in the way homosexuality was, because she thought it was impossible.

I'm an actress and I am a scholar of English literature. And I never know which part of that is more important to me. I think it obviously must be the acting part because otherwise I would have become an academic, which I didn't do. But I've always had a love of English literature and particularly of Charles Dickens.

I think it's very likely that because Dickens [Charles Dickens] was able to depict - in a way that I don't think had ever been done before - people's real lives, it had an enormous response among the poor. So he was the last great artist whose work was appreciated by everybody. People at the very top and the very bottom loved Dickens. Queen Victoria asked him to come and read for her and people in the street would clap him as he went. And he very much needed that contact with real people. It mattered to him. He felt, I think, that he was a man of the people. And he was.

Nowadays people say that you must let children be what they are, but when I was growing up the parents defined the child. And my parents had a definite vision of how they wanted me to be.

Early patterns are very important. They are the paradigm for relationships, since they are the earliest ones you observe. I am a clone of my mother, whereas my partner is like my father in that she's a thoughtful person, a scholar, who is extremely quiet, not demonstrative.

I used to sleep around and be silly because I thought I was an ugly, fat little person and couldn't believe that anyone would want me. So I did it to prove I could get someone.

[on her mother] She took centre-stage in our lives. She was the star. And when I hear pieces of music that my mother liked, I weep. I think it's true that the people you've loved in your life never leave you, because seeds of that love always remain flowering somewhere.

I don't think that I've achieved what I hoped because I've never been at the National Theatre, I've never been at the Royal Shakespeare Company. I feel infuriated that I haven't achieved what I'd hoped.

[on Barry Humphries and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival] He had more talent in his little finger than they did in their whole bodies, all of them.

[her thoughts about gronw up fans of Harry Potter] I worry about Harry Potter fans. They should be over that by now. You know, I mean, it was 25 years ago, and it's for children. I think it's for children. But they get stuck in it.

[on Arnold Schwarzenegger] He was actually quite rude. He farted in my face. Now, I fart, of course I do, but I don't fart in people's faces. He did it deliberately, right in my face.

[on working with actor Steve Martin] I was hit all day by doors opening in my face; repeatedly punched, slapped and knocked down by an unlovely and unapologetic Steve Martin.