“In a way, bullying is an ordinary evil. It’s hugely prevalent, all too often ignored – and being ignored, it is therefore condoned.”
“Yoga is immediately rewarding, whatever your level, because it’s not about being able to attain the perfect lotus position. Each day, there is an improvement on the day before. It’s not competitive; it’s not a race. With yoga, the journey is the destination.”
“I have a huge belief in the importance of bees, not just for their honey, which is a healing and delicious food, but the necessity of bee colonies that are vital to the health of the planet.”
“Our body is the only one we’ve been given, so we need to maintain it; we need to give it the best nutrition.”
“Tuscany is so full of history and beauty – you meet wonders of art and architecture on almost every corner. But I love the region’s homier aspects: the special sweetness of the tomatoes, the soft mozzarella, the heady scents of basil and garlic everywhere.”
“I was in ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,’ and I like my bad boy movie movies.”
“Every teenager feels like a freak. It’s part of being a teenager, part of the individuation from child to adult – those teenage years are who am I? What am I? Where am I going?”
“I like green juices in the morning, made from things such as kale, and cucumber and peppers; then in the afternoon, when the blood sugar goes down, I’ll make a carrot, apple, and ginger juice.”
“When I wake up in the morning, I like to express my gratitude for being on the planet. That gratefulness makes me very present.”
“I have great people who help me be on time, but I’m not an on-time person, and I’m very chaotic in my thoughts.”
“We women, we’re always being invited to change our hairstyle, change our clothes, change our wardrobes. It’s also important for us to remember as we age to keep changing the way we think of the world. I’m not saying to be flaky at all; but rather than being rigid about something, stay open and available.”
“I like juices and antioxidants. I’m a health nut.”
“The scars on the face have always given me a sense that I’m not a very attractive person. I’m always unsure of myself, of my facial self.”
“Eating’s pretty major; we have feasts at our house.”
“I get a lot of mud slung at me, and yes, I do take planes, but I feel that’s my life. My life is to travel and also to speak out about the horrors of an environment that is being abused at the hands of an irresponsible oil company.”
“Sting is much better at switching off than I am. He can concentrate and meditate whatever might be going on in the room and is far more disciplined.”
“I’ve never really had a sense that I am just Mrs. Sting. Indeed, I am Mrs. Sting and very proud and very happy that I am still Mrs. Sting, as opposed to Mrs. ex-Sting. But I’m a very busy person, so I’ve always done things and got on with my life.”
“The Trudie Styler that is spoken of is extremely privileged in life and feels that privilege.”
“As a late teenager, I had some puppy fat on me, and I noticed that I could put on weight. I have always been very disciplined because my mother was very beautiful, a very pretty woman, but she was immobilised by obesity. At her biggest, she was about 17 stone. And she was always on some sort of fad diet.”
“Telling women’s stories is really important.”
“The film industry is driven by male narrative. Heads of studios are often men, teeming with male executives everywhere you look, and so the narratives we have the screenwriters usually for male leads. Women tend to be second string: the girlfriend of, the secretary who becomes.”
“At the age of two-and-a-half, I was run down by a truck. I had gone rogue in the house while my mother was bathing my sister. I went outside and met a friend who promised me candy. Afterward, I walked back by myself across the road where I fell down in the street. A 15-year-old boy delivering bread struck me down.”
“The standing yoga routines work all the main muscles of the body and improve stamina while increasing your metabolic rate, and there is a specific Yoga Abs workout to build all-important core strength to improve posture and trim the waistline.”
“Sting and I have six kids between us. A lot of members of our family have ADHD and dyslexia.”
“I feel at home wherever Sting is – he’s my home.”
“I nearly drowned in the Xingu River in Brazil some years ago. When I was given my life back, I decided I wanted to make some changes, so I left acting to concentrate on producing films. I wanted to be in control of my own life.”
“When I first met Clint Eastwood, I bobbed him a curtsy. I still cringe about that to this day.”
“Sting and I need to think what our relationship is to England in the long term.”
“Rock stars’ wives have never been given an easy time. They weren’t nice about Linda McCartney till she died.”
“My life is to travel, and my life is also to speak out about the horrors of an environment that is being abused at the hands of oil companies.”
“I gave birth to our daughter Coco in Pisa, and it was a wonderful time in all our lives.”
“My first trip to Italy’s Tuscany region was in 1990 when my husband, Sting, recorded an album there.”
“I don’t want to criticise my country, but there are times I feel Sting and myself have been treated unkindly.”
“I don’t feel I want to complain about anything that’s said about me.”
“I have such a fortunate life that of course I will have my detractors. I have a very endowed life.”
“I don’t have a musical bone in my body.”
“When I’m in public doing the glamorous-wife-of-rock-star persona, I don’t want to disappoint, but when I act, I really like to leave all that behind.”
“The great thing about acting is you don’t have to worry about yourself at all. I tend to just get out of the way of me and let something come through.”
“I think I became an actress because I didn’t know who I was, and I certainly didn’t like the person I saw when I looked in the mirror.”
“I don’t know how happy I was when I met Sting. I always had this difficulty of not really knowing who I was.”
“It’s important to have frank discussions about what the other wants. To be in a relationship that is like a little lifetime, that’s a challenge.”
“We all struggle to find our place, and schools can be cruel to kids who aren’t part of a pack.”
“Becoming an actor let me escape the me that I had in my heart, which was I’m a loser.”
“I hope when people see that female-led production companies are working, there will be more of us.”
“I was not a very… um… not a very popular girl. I think a lot of it was, you know, no boo-hoo about it – but I looked pretty strange for the first few years of my life.”
“There are some things I feel the need to pussyfoot around that I would like to… give vent to. But I realise the press isn’t the place to do that.”
“I wouldn’t deliberately go and buy something that one would categorise as an extravagant thing.”
“My life is extravagant.”
“If I’m connected to an idea, it just doesn’t let me go. All I have to do is catch up to the image in my head by doing the practical steps to get there.”
“I’m not an unkind person, but by the same token, I’m not a people-pleaser.”
“I enjoy the riches of life.”
“I could only imagine myself being successful.”
“I think it’s fascinating that people take an interest in a middle-aged married couple and what happens behind our closed front door.”
“I love women; I have women friends, but I’m definitely a heterosexual.”
“Ashtanga yoga is a well known practice for keeping yourself fit and healthy. Yoga is good for my body.”
“We are putting value in the things that really are not valuable, things like commodities or disposable stuff that can bought, but the rainforest has been undervalued, because the value shouldn’t be in the trees that you take out; it’s should be with leaving the trees to preserve the life system that sustains life on the planet.”
“I’ve got to like myself, I think, through my relationship with Sting, who pours love over me.”
“I was operated on facially so much when I was young, and I had massive amounts of stitches.”
“I had operations up until I was 18, then revision on my scars to put back my eyebrows. So I’ve had a lot of what is called plastic surgery. And I have huge, huge respect for what that is.”
“Meditation is really letting go of all the thought processes or ‘mind traffic’ that gets in the way of just whatever is between you and space and consciousness.”
“I think having a good yoga practice and a spiritual practice is a recipe for living well and, hopefully, living longer.”
“I’d like to see more female heads of studios because what’s also being crucially lost is the female perspective: 50% of the population are not having their stories told.”
“We need to be creating products that incentivise women to come to the movies more.”
“Hollywood stops hiring their star leading ladies when they turn 40. It’s very defeating.”
“We need to encourage more women to write roles for other women. The great substantive roles aren’t being written for women and aren’t being produced and directed by women.”
“There’s still this idea that women are over by the time they are 40, so that they can’t play the love interest opposite a 50-year-old man. George Clooney is 52, but he’s always on the arm of a thirt-something actress. He gets Vera Farmiga. You don’t get a 50-year-old woman on the arm of a 30-year-old guy.”
“Your big movie stars who’ve been in blockbusters generating a lot of dollars are looking for the meatier, substantive roles that they think will make the awards season.”
“As a producer, I’m quite nurturing, I like working with inexperienced, unseasoned directors.”
“I’m lucky enough to have some celebrity light around me. I can go on a platform and say what I think to represent these voices that can’t be heard.”
“There’ll be years of teething problems searching for alternatives to oil, but they have to be embraced with passion because our oil is finite, and we’re running out. Fact.”
“I don’t believe in carbon offsetting. Planting 60 trees so you don’t have to say your Hail Marys that night? It’s a crock.”
“We should be looking at the bigger picture. It’s all very well going around driving our Priuses, but we have to look to our governments to make us less reliant on oil.”
“I’m largely health-conscious and work out during the week, but I don’t punish myself at the weekends.”
“I was brought up on a council estate in the countryside near Stoke Prior in Worcestershire, but I adored visiting the farm where my father worked.”
“I’m a bit of a vegetable freak, so we’ll often have four or five different varieties on the table.”
“I’ve had a few ghostly encounters.”
“Yoga is the best holistic workout and body toner there is. It sorts out a chaotic mind and calms the body – it is how I de-stress – or stop myself getting stressed in the first place.”
“I took up yoga when I was trying to get my figure back after having my third child, Coco.”
“Seeing our kids as grown up and taking their places in the world is just fantastic.”
“I’m very emotional about my animals.”
“In all the stuff I do, I really like it most when I’m being creative and collaborative, working with people who have my kind of energy around me.”
“I’d never thought of directing as an option for me. I don’t know why, because I’m incredibly bossy. I was surprised how collaborative it is. As the producer, you have to get the money and schedule on time, and that’s not what I do best.”
“Pilates has been the perfect solution to maintaining strength and vitality in my life.”
“The core is the most important muscle group in your body. If your core is not strong, the rest of your body is weakened, too.”
“He’s known as Sting. I have my own personal name for him, but that shall remain a personal name.”
“We’re a busy family. We like challenges, and we like to be fully engaged with life. I’ve done that as long as I’ve been with Sting.”
“I think David Cameron is really not very passionate about the environment. He said all the right things. I don’t think he’s come through with anything that’s tangible.”
“I didn’t really have many friends as a child.”
“Why was I so single-minded about acting? Acting wasn’t in the family; no one went to the theatre in my street. It wasn’t encouraged in my school.”
“In life, you see younger men and older women, and the majority of marriages don’t have such a huge age gap as we’re used to seeing in films.”
“My daughter Mickey is an actress, and I tell her women need to make their own films; they should always be looking for stories to develop themselves and go to acting class – not that she needs much prompting in that!”
“I’ve had chronically bad stomach aches since I was a child.”
“I got called Scarface at school.”
“It’s interesting, the acting thing. I think it must be a deep sense of insecurity that made me want to explore other characters.”
“If you become more of a witness to the way you’re engaging in life, you can catch yourself really screwing up some days!”
“I like producing, but I don’t love it. I love acting. I got into producing because I had a bad time in 1989 when no work was coming in.”
“I always seem to have a good time when I’m interviewed. I really enjoy the whole process of meeting another person and having that exchange, but you know, if I’d read all my press collectively, I know I’d just say, ‘Well, I don’t think I’ll ever be interviewed again, thanks very much!’”
“I’m good at the broad strokes but hopeless at the details.”
“It’s a very ancient culture, British culture. You can’t be seen to be too wealthy, and you certainly can’t be seen to be giving away any of your wealth either because that’s sort of vulgar, too. It’s funny, that, because in New York, if you are wealthy, you have to be philanthropic to be successful.”
“We’re all born into this world. Some are placed gently, others thrust into it, and still others abandoned.”
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