I'm less confident now than I've ever been. In this peculiar craft, confidence is something you spend a lifetime losing. I used to be frightened only one night a week but now I'm frightened of every performance. I mean really frightened.

You'd think is something one would grow out of. But you grow into it. The more you do, the more you realize how painfully easy it is to be lousy and how very difficult to be good.

[On being asked, 'Did you ever say that an actress needs to be able to laugh and to cry and that when you need to laugh you think of your sex life and when you need to cry you think of your sex life?':] No.

If I'm too strong for some people that's their problem.

If, as an actor, you allow yourself to be cocooned from the boring pin-pricks of day-to-day existence - like standing in a queue at the butcher's or any of the other dreary little events that we all have in our daily lives - you begin to lose your lifeline to what people are. And if you lose that, you eventually lose the ability to act.

For marriage the best man is the man within oneself. Most women need to develop their own 'masculine' qualities of independence, pride, courage and open sexuality.

The good writer and the good actor are always searching for what is essential. It is a never-ending task because what is essential is always elusive and, therefore, fascinating.