Quotes from Catherine Tate

By a lot of people's standards, I lived a very privileged life. I never wanted for attention, I never wanted for material things. In some ways, I was probably spoiled because I never had to share. And I was doted on.

How nice it would be to breeze through life and just brush things off. I never read reviews because I hate to lose more than I like to win; I experience negative emotions far greater than positive ones.

If I hadn't had a baby, a part of me thinks I might have turned up on the red carpets all the time and gone, 'Hi, it's me!' Maybe other people do it because they haven't got kids and they've nowhere else to be. But because I have, I don't feel like that.

No one got anywhere by being too scared to open their mouth in case nobody laughed.

Because I was a shy and awkward child, I used humour to deflect attention. It was a controlling mechanism. Because I could use it to control my image.

Don't take criticism personally; take from it what's useful. Apply it and move on to something better.

I went from an unemployed actor's life to doing stand-up comedy, and that was fortuitous. It's not the usual way the crow flies, going from being in a TV sketch show to playing one of Shakespeare's finest characters, but, hey, that's the way it has happened.

I'm naturally quite lazy, and I actually think I'm lax about my career. None of my work defines who I am.

At my core, the glass isn't half-empty - it's not even what I ordered in the first place.

Any degree of success or achievement for me is only ever a relief. My version of getting carried away is: 'Mmm, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.'