It's appalling that there have to be movements organized to give human beings the right to be human beings in the eyes of other human beings.

Being an actress has something in common with being a housewife. They both look terribly easy to someone who hasn't done them. And the easier it looks, probably the better you are doing your job.

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.

I have been disappointed many times, but never defeated.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

I can't actually see myself putting make-up on my face at the age of sixty, but I can see myself going on a camel train to Samarkand.

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.