Close girlfriends I don't have necessarily, as an actress. Perhaps there is a thing of competition there, you know, when you're doing the same things, and you're the same age. I could be with younger actors, but woman of my age probably - there is and there isn't, one doesn't like to think of it, but I think there is a sense of competition. Which is good, also.

Because one has the animal instinct to seek out the people that suits one - you see people that go on life's journeys and get muddled along the way. If you look at their lives they've always gone with the wrong people... can you say it's the wrong people - I don't know.

You go though a period of immense pain when reality meets the dream.

You don't need the painful memories, because either you've resolved them. Denying always makes them want to come back. Denial is a mechanism that doesn't work. But allowing them to come back in little by little, those memories, you can begin to be quite comfortable with them, and it's even nice to have that as part of the map of your life.

I am not qualified to be a Dame. To be Dame you have to represent England in a way that I don't.

A lot of young actors will do a scene and then run off and look at themselves. I don't believe in that at all

I've lived through deaths in my family and I've lived through separations in my family so those are the big ones. Those are the ones that press the biggest buttons in human beings' lives.