The great writers like Chekhov know that tragedy and laughter are just a few steps from each other ... but it took me a long time as an actress to learn that. Actually Arthur Miller taught me in the Seventies. We were making a CBS TV drama of his play Playing for Time about Auschwitz but the characters were laughing. It was a big insight for me to realise that that was what's called gallows humour, in this case worse than the gallows, that humans need to laugh and make jokes in order to survive.

I give myself to my parts as to a lover.

When somebody can't reveal what they're after - whether by word or by how the camera is set up, lighting, etcetera - it's like an electronic beep beep; it interferes very much with what we actors can do. And, after all, the director wants the actors to be bringing forth the best that they can, according to whatever vision he has.

Shakespeare lets us see real people undergoing real processes, with real feelings

A conservative frame of mind is very limiting for an actor, and a human being, too.

Theater helps people keep sane.

We will always want films ... that basically are centred on young people, because young people is the way we live on, we older people, insofar as we live on.