Quotes from Tracey Ullman

It's the poignancy and sadness in things that gets to me.

It's sometimes shocking to find out what people really believe in.

I became an American in 2006. It got me thinking about what is my America and what's my perception of America.

I'm usually put off by performers when they get political.

It makes you more open, it gives you perspective, having a child.

My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors.

A lot of stand-up comedy is embarrassing: too many idiots doing it in orange neckties against brick walls. I find most sitcoms embarrassing, too, because they seem so forced.

I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me.

Great pressure is put on kids who don't have dads to get out and make money, and make life easier for everybody. It was always, 'Hurry up, grow up, make money, there's no man to do it for us.'

I've always gotten a positive reaction to doing African-American characters.

I worked with Paul McCartney for a while and saw what it does to you to be treated like a god for twenty years.

I hope I never get so hard up I have to do advertisements. I've gotten ridiculous offers.

I hate clowns.

The working classes in England were always sentimental, and the Irish and Scots and Welsh. The upper-class English are the stiff-upper-lipped ones. And the middle class. They're the ones who are crippled emotionally because they can't move up, and they're desperate not to move down.

There were no examples of girls like myself becoming successful actresses. To be an actress in England was a serious, upper-middle class girl's profession. I just thought I would never be accepted unless I pretended to become somebody I wasn't.

I don't see myself as a stand-up comic doing cynical, mean-spirited or disrespectful stuff. I'm very aware that I don't like to disrespect people too much.

I'm as famous as I want to be.

I'm fascinated by Bollywood.

I've never looked ahead very much in my life. I've never had any grand plan from the outset. I had no burning ambition to do what I do

I like going to France, because no one knows who I am.

I used to dress up and impersonate our next-door neighbor, Miss Cox. She wore rubber boots, a wool hat, and her nose always dripped.

I don't get very involved in the L.A. scene. When you do get invited out, you are expected to be on all the time. It's just wearying.

I grew up with Jilly and Tamsin driving Volvos. But I wasn't one of them... I always felt more comfortable with Cockney and working-class people. My heroes were the Beatles and people like Michael Caine.

As you get older, you realize it's work. It's that fine line between love and companionship. But passionate love? I'd love to know how to make that last.