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.

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.

I think the theatre is as essential to civilization as safe, pure water.

A theater is being given over to market forces, which means that a whole generation that should be able to do theater as well as see it is being completely deprived

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.

The arts stop society going rotten and mad.