I don't think, until you've actually lost somebody you really love, that you can go through that door that allows you to be grown-up.

I hope to start enjoying flirting again when I'm 70, like my mother did.

Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich language of Shakespeare's plays at which, by then, I was something of an old hand.

Every woman feels she is too old and has missed the boat.

I think you have to relax about aging. What else can you do?

I don't treasure things much - just people. And pets.

I'm sure people in the business have said: She's too old for that part. I don't hear about it because your agent protects you from those negative things.