Quotes from Eileen Atkins

I have never been able to bear people who are obsessed with beauty.

I think most British people who say they can do an American accent are so bad at it. I find it excruciating. I find it excruciating the other way around, too.

My looks were good enough for what I needed in every possible way but not so much to be a burden.

On the street where I lived, they almost didn't know the word 'university,' and my mother was simply appalled when it was suggested to her that I was to go to a drama college.

A little allegory of the soul - wherever it hides, God will find it.

It's extraordinary to hear waves of laughter after you've been playing something, night after night, to nothing. That's why I'm still hooked on acting: the terror of the possibility of things going wrong, the thrill when they go right, and the joy of the company.

People assume I'm posh because I'm one of the acting dames. I grew up in Tottenham and didn't used to speak like I do now.

Wheels come off? Get on with it. Cope. Survive.

Film was something I didn't really think about when I was young, because if you looked like me, you weren't a film star.

Bad things happen. Cope!

I'm rarely wrong.

I believe I was put on this planet to act, and it's given me huge fulfilment. I feel I've realised my destiny, and I've had a very, very good time doing it.

I hate tight, tight stuff showing every line. I want to be sick when people are in Lycra.

My grammar school caught on to the fact that the reason I was falling asleep in class was that I was doing working men's clubs till 10 or 11 at nights. My mother was told I shouldn't do it anymore. Of course, I was bringing in money to the family, so nobody liked hearing that.

One of the things I love about Helena Bonham Carter is that she is ravishing, but she does as much as she can to play it down and look funny. She doesn't let her looks get in the way. I hugely respect that.

Losing friends is the worst thing about getting older.

My very first memory of being alive is being tossed in the air by my father and laughing and knowing, really knowing, that his was absolute joy.

It's no use ignoring looks or charm if you're going into the theatre.

It's a damn shame we have this immediate ticking off in the mind about how people sound. On the other hand, how many people really want to be operated upon by a surgeon who talks broad cockney?

I imagine I'll retire mid-performance. I'll say, 'Sorry, everyone, I can't do this anymore. I must have suddenly aged.' Then I'll walk off. Yes, I'm sure that's how.

My parents felt so uncomfortable coming to the kind of theater I was in; they had nothing to say about it.

I love dresses that just skim the body, that suggest what's underneath rather than display it.

I don't believe in remaking television series. I should never have agreed to reviving 'Upstairs Downstairs' because my heart wasn't in it, but part of me did think about my pension.

When I think of all the Hamlets I've seen, there's been a load of different styles, some marvellous. You like the Hamlet you saw when you were the right age to think you could be Hamlet.