Quotes from Sheila Hancock

What I would love to do is more telly comedy. I did a tiny bit in 'Toast of London' and was in one episode of Catherine Tate's 'Nan.' I was crying with laughter.

Prompting children to create imaginary worlds is hugely important.

I talk too much and I don't listen or pause to think.

It's lovely loving, isn't it? In fact, I find it almost better, because being loved sometimes embarrasses me, but loving is a gift.

Acting is a job and it pays the rent. I don't do it for fun.

That's why I'm grumpy all the time. Absolutely. Because your ideal never happens. Nothing ever goes right. But the thing about getting older is that you do accept it.

I got myself into hot water with the press in 2014 by suggesting that the art installation of poppies in the Tower of London moat should be completed by being malevolently mown down by a tank, in the way that the service men and women whom the poppies represented had been.

My new catchphrase is: 'Pull yourself together.' I've done the inner child, I've had analysis, I've decided that unless you're mentally ill and need support, it's up to you.

When you've been bereaved, you expect other people to rescue you, but I'm afraid they can't - it's down to you.

Inventing characters is extraordinary: proper authors say so often that characters 'just appear' and that does happen. These people keep leaping out and saying, why don't you write about me?

I love beautiful women. I'm not jealous of them at all.

You know, life is about loss and recovering and starting again. It gets a bit more difficult to start again the older you get. But you can do it, you can do it.

I can't keep my trap shut in interviews - I'm not very good at dissembling.

On the whole, I think journalists have been kind about me, but they do make me sound a bit of a dreary cow. There seems to be so much suffering in my life.

It's wonderful to be with people of a younger generation. it really is.

I can't do solitude.

You have to be very careful about your mental health.

I'm dirty in an argument; I'll win by any method. But I change my mind all the time and I will admit when I'm wrong.

You're never going to get 2,400 people a night for a play. I'm sorry, you really aren't.

I would have loved to have been beautiful; to have looked in the mirror and said: 'God you look wonderful.' Do people do that, I wonder. Love what they see in the mirror?

I much prefer grandmotherhood to motherhood.

People are surprised because I drive a Jaguar XK sports car and say the occasional intelligent thing. People think I'm an exception, but I'm typical of a lot of women of my age.

We should be so grateful for musicals, and the amount of work that goes into these shows is easily comparable to things I've been in at the National and the RSC. Why do we think it is less important?.

There's an incredibly grand attitude towards musicals. I don't understand why my profession is so snooty about it.