“I was quite bright, but I didn’t do much with it, and I thought acting was dressing up and shouting for a living – which, of course, it isn’t.”
“There are times when you come across somebody that’s really impressive, someone that’s got a proper living and really does make a difference to people’s lives. Then I do feel a bit of a wanker, admitting I’m an actress. That’s hard to say to someone who may be making a difference. But I don’t know how I could change things.”
“I became an actress because I’m lazy. I wouldn’t apply myself at school.”
“The older I get, the more I’m starting to believe in myself. I’m beginning to think of roles that I could do that I would not have allowed myself to think of before, saying: ‘That’s not for me, that’s for the big guns.’”
“I have no interest in being a celebrity. I wouldn’t go to anything that I wasn’t involved in just for the sake of wearing a nice frock and having my picture taken. That part of the business doesn’t make me feel very comfortable.”
“I have no real ambition or strategy. If this was all to finish, it’s totally fine. There’s a lot more to do out there than put on silly frocks and shout for a living. I could always go back to, ‘Would you like soup with that?’”
“I always say: ‘If I’m lucky enough to be given the opportunity to work again, that’s it, I’m being wheeled on, sitting on a sofa, and someone’s going to feed me grapes, and I’m not getting up.’”
“Jack wasn’t my type at all. I thought he was too young and too posh, and I told him that. Plus, I couldn’t deal with his dodgy bowl-cut. But he wore me down.”
“I had a very bad first experience of Shakespeare at school, and, now I’m determined to put that wrong right and just make Shakespeare as vivid and live as possible.”
“I’d always used humour as a weapon, as a protection. But being able to make people laugh is a way of not getting in too deep; it’s a quick, transient fix.”
“The older I get, the more I’m starting to believe in myself.”
“I feel so Scottish when I go abroad, and I’m so proud of it, but for me, it’s not a political statement – I just happen to be Scottish.”
“I wouldn’t apply myself at school. I was quite bright, but I didn’t do much with it, and I thought acting was dressing up and shouting for a living.”
“It’s good for me to pull away from something that is just done for effect, which was basically Sue White in ‘Green Wing.’ In that, it was very much: if in trouble, gurn, or fall down. There was no character background to Sue. You didn’t know who she was. She didn’t have any toehold in any kind of reality.”
“I bring so much of myself to each character that there’s always a worrying point when I think: ‘Oh no, I’m really that person.’”
“I think there is a difference between being a celebrity and being an actor.”
“I’ve always been a gurner. I tried to reel it in. You know there was a period when I thought I was going to be a really serious actress, but the gurning… I can’t get in control of it. It just runs away with me.”
“I don’t think of myself as an actress. I still think I’m fannying around in my mum’s front room.”
“I’m always slightly worried if I do a film and we’re filming it in Luxembourg. I know it’s going to go straight DVD.”
“I used to say Edinburgh was a beautiful actress with no talent. I thought it was just like a shortbread tin. I think that’s because I did six Festivals in a row there, and I never saw the real Edinburgh, just a lot of deeply annoying Cambridge Footlights kids wanting to be actresses.”
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