Quotes from Harriet Walter

I just like watching people who really are not self-conscious, who aren't aware, because I fear that one could become too self-conscious, too artful, as an actor. Sometimes if you look at somebody, you can extrapolate from their exterior what might be happening in their interior. I'm nosy.

I yearn to make a really good, intelligent movie before I die: I don't completely rule out the possibility, but in Hollywood, I'm not bankable.

I'm no longer the young woman I was playing before, and I'm in a profession where that continuum that is me is irrelevant to most people - they're meeting me for the first time, seeing me for the first time, and they're seeing an old woman, so that's what I've got to start being.

I think I have a deep-seated fear of being misunderstood. Or being misjudged.

The language is always powerful in Shakespeare, but with 'Antony and Cleopatra,' the speeches are so big and muscular and rich - exhausting to speak, actually.

I'm very aware that after you've played Cleopatra, there's not a lot that can top that in this sphere, so it means that I want to almost change the sphere I work in rather completely because I will always be comparing it to Cleopatra.

Love is different at different stages of your life.

When you are starting to fall in love with someone you want to know everything there is to know about them; you want to understand their world and be accepted into it. It is the same for an actor with a new role.

Romance is about investing in the future - with older people, there is less time for happy ever after.

I've been taking lessons in Damehood from Judi Dench. Being a Dame is useful in restaurants, hotels, and restaurants, Judi says, but you have to get someone else to do the booking.

I do think that there are certain parts, if you are lucky enough to play them, that are bigger than you, and they stretch you. I don't think you become a bigger person, but you develop certain muscles you didn't have before.

I vote, but I don't feel that I'm achieving much when I do.

I've found a much better love life in older age.