An actor is somebody who communicates someone else's words and emotions to an audience. It's not me. It's what writers want me to be.

It's easy to get bogged down in bad news.

I think everybody who was in it thought they were all going to be Eartha Kitt or be big stars. That didn't happen, but it was a wake-up call to have one's first professional job on Broadway, I must say.

I'm far, far, far from that. But of course, that's one of the joys of acting is that you can move up in the world, even if - you know, in the characters that you're playing, even if you don't.

It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.

A lot of writing about being a mother is not so much writing about the kids themselves. They become placeholders for the shift that happens when you're suddenly in charge of other people.

I feel now like a hinge between generations, which is strange. It just happened recently. I think it's because my daughter is so much like me at her age. I feel like I'm reliving my own mother's experience of raising me.