People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.

I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.

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.

The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them.

The drama school was in Oxford - and it's funny to think of it, but in those days when I started out the University was nearly all male. And they certainly weren't mixed.

I had been feeling a little rum. I didn't think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails, and I don't know what the future holds, if anything.

Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.