Quotes from Anne Reid

In my day, the films you got were about mature people, people with some kind of weight.

I like waking up in the morning and thinking, 'Mmm, I might go to Paris today.' I don't want to ask anyone if they want to come with me or mind me going. I like being my own agent. I have my grandsons and son. If I didn't have them, it would be different.

I did a play in Bolton - 'Billy Liar.' I turned it down at first but then thought, 'What the hell else can I do? I'm no good at anything else.'

Wouldn't it be lovely if there were no such things as birth certificates? If I really thought I was 53, life would be much better. I'd love to blow up all the birth certificates.

Maybe I'll get into a Bond film... I always thought I'd be a Bond Girl when I was young.

I don't ever think of myself as coming from a particular class because my father was working class but made his living as a newspaper foreign correspondent - someone of no fixed abode, as he used to say - who was as comfortable dining with the Mountbattens in India as he was having a pint with the boys. He was very gregarious.

I should be in an old people's home now, counting the roses in the wallpaper. It's a good life, isn't it?

The day that changed my life was 3 July 1986, when I went to see American actress and singer Barbara Cook at London's Donmar Warehouse.

I now do my own cabaret act, singing and telling stories about my life.

I'm quite surprised I ever got married in the first place.

I think it's such a clever idea, that you fall in love when you're 16, and then you have this fantasy about that person for the rest of your life.

My parents were adorable. They were very kind, and very broad-minded compared to people of their generation.

I think that the romantic suspense that you used to get between people like Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant is much sexier than seeing people taking their clothes off and getting into bed, which is voyeurism.

I'd make every weapon on the planet unusable. Every bomb. Every gun.

My father fought in the war, and then he was posted all 'round the world with his job. So I didn't know him very well when I was young.

I'm enormously proud of being the ancestor of a convict. That's mad, isn't it, but I really am.

My father was full of tales. He said his family were ministers in the Church of Scotland, or they were lawyers.

'Downton' took a long time to catch fire in America, but we have been getting good reviews for 'Tango.'

I tell myself things will be different in a few years' time, but this is the most wonderful, golden time for me. I'm basking in the success of 'Tango', really loving it.

I don't do so much acting work now, as there aren't the parts except for 'Tango'. So if I didn't have the cabaret work, I don't know what I would be doing.

Christmas Day itself hasn't always been great. My parents went abroad when I was very young, and I went to boarding school. We had a few Christmases before that - I remember a big sack of presents and Mummy cooking goose.

Your confidence is destroyed when you find out you can't trust people.

I'm more temperamental. As I've got older, I've become more demanding.

I'm not homophobic. I mean, who cares? You know the state of the world, and you're only here for about 70, 80, years, so why do people worry about somebody's sex life? It's bonkers, really.