The older you get, I have to say, the funnier you find life. That's the only way to go.

I hope there's a tinge of disgrace about me. Hopefully, there's one good scandal left in me yet.

I made a bit of a stink. At the time, it was considered very bad form.

Maybe at this stage in my career, it's from that younger generation that I have most to learn.

They do say that the profession gets increasingly difficult, but my career seems to have been inside out. I'm playing the biggest parts now that I'm older. That's probably right, because I wasn't ready for them before.

Yes, well, you are quite camp, so I guess that he could see the point of you.

I've always been on the side of fully emancipated women with independent minds.

I thought it was ridiculous that I was being paid less than a cameraman, and I wanted to shame them. And I did.

You can't actually legislate what goes on in people's minds and their attitudes, but you certainly can legislate for parity where pay and salaries are concerned.

If you're earning equal pay to a man, you get respect. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

If you get serious about yourself as you get old, you are pathetic.

I think women of my age are still attractive.

I'm portrayed as this tough broad, but I'm not.

There was a guy called Carlos Thompson, who was I think Argentinian, and he was doing a series called 'Sentimental Agent'. That was the very first thing that I did. It was supposed to be taking place in some exotic location, but in actual fact, it was Chertsey with a few shivering potted palms.

Do you know, I have no idea how I got 'The Avengers'? I'd left the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I was one of a long list of girls, and got it on my audition.

You'll always be close to somebody that you worked with very intimately for so long, and you become really fond of each other.

In actual fact, I doubled 'Twelfth Night' and 'The Avengers'. I was going backwards and forwards to Stratford. I played matinees Wednesday, matinee and evenings Saturdays, and the other days of the week, I was filming in Elstree.

I think Thespis just wanted to be a solo player, you know?

I come from a generation which definitely treated anyone older and more successful with reverence. But it's much more democratic nowadays.

I've been single forever, and, oh God, I love every minute of it. I don't wish to sound offensive, and it always does when women say that, doesn't it?

It may be a masculine attitude to take lovers, but it's definitely prevalent. I'm certainly not the oldest person doing it - not that I'm doing it right now, but when I was.

I never get lonely; even as a child, I didn't.

If you have a good inner life, you don't get lonely. I've got a good imagination. I don't miss romance.

To all the younglings I come across in 'Game of Thrones' who suddenly find themselves well known, I say the theatre is your best friend - they will remember you.

I read prodigiously as a child, and I still do.

I was nourished and nurtured at Stratford as a very young actress. They guided me and forgave me!

We have no companies now, not in the sense that I know, that nurture actors. It's very depressing that, given the money they get, the companies today don't number up in my estimation. They should be bringing on young talent, and they don't.

I rely upon the directors to fill me in before a shot.

I loved the idea of playing this naughty old bag, offering her own explanation. It's my idea of heaven.

I'm so lucky. I could be sitting at home crumbling, but I'm not.

I think I'm a mousepad. I don't want to be a mousepad, but I'm a mousepad. I'm also a screen saver, thank you very much. It's weird.

In the old days, a star was someone up there - you know, Greta Garbo - but a telly star was somebody you could approach.

I didn't know what to do with the fan mail. I had a little mini, and I used to put it at the back of my mini, and it grew and grew.

'Game of Thrones' is wonderful. My theory is they employ all these British actors because, one, they are like me and grateful. Two, we turn up, and we know our lines. Three, we don't demand a 60 ft. Winnebago and PA, and four, largely we are very uncomplaining.

I never relied on my beauty for anything. It was one of those things that was inevitable; you have a bit of philosophy about it. I didn't go into mourning.

There is a life after being at the pinnacle of your beauty. Plenty of life and fun.

Working keeps me young. Anything that exercises the brain like learning lines.

I think politicians misjudge our intelligence. We can, and do, see through them. But I quite enjoy watching political programmes because they get the heart going.

I wouldn't like to see a female Bond, because we wouldn't want to lose the Bond girls. But we could have a lesbian Bond - why not?

When I started, TV was regarded as something that wasn't as great as film or theatre or radio, but it has proved to have far greater powers than those.

It's a very powerful medium now, and should be celebrated as such, because we have the greatest television in the world.

I don't have it in for critics, and I never have.

Critics have to sit through an awful lot of rubbish, and you feel really sorry for them. In fact, I've been in a play where I felt sorry for the critics.

We depend on the critics to give us a glimpse of what happened. Bernard Shaw championed Ibsen, who got the most terrible notices for his plays. Kenneth Tynan championed young writers, and as a result, the theatre has changed radically.

I'm really grateful for 'Game of Thrones'. It's something wonderful to happen to an actress of my age, and Dubrovnik is astonishingly beautiful.

All these old images of me floating across the screen, the terrible chasm of what you were and what you are. I know who I am, but these people who see me as I was then don't.

There is always one thing that turns you into an icon, an iconic image: in my case, a catsuit. But the icon 40 years later doesn't really want to know because it's not relevant to me.

Some of those early photographs of me might as well be sepia. It's always thought that I disclaim television and am too theatre, but the truth is 'The Avengers' bores me now. I was grateful because it catapulted me into stage stardom. It was good. I'm not ashamed of it. But I only did it for two years.

I step into a character in my public life. People who don't make that distinction are dooooomed.

I confess I do a lot of the wrong things: I smoke, and I drink wine, and people might be horrified at my eating habits - I eat when I'm hungry, and if I'm not, I don't.