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.

I regard bed as my best friend.

Many years ago, when I was working on Broadway, I used to go to a drug rehabilitation centre on Sundays. I didn't lecture them against the perils of drug-taking; I gave them drama therapy.

When my marriage broke up, I went to three separate therapists, and each was worse than the last. I can only speak for myself. There are other people it's been incredibly useful for, but not me.

If a man holds a door open for me or pulls back a chair so that this old bag can sit down, I'm delighted.

It's a question of economics. If you're paid the same as a man, which now you are in this profession, you're equal.

I love women but am aware we're dangerous and deeply competitive, although I gave up being competitive long ago.

You hand the baton on, and that's why roles like 'Medea' resonate for years and years, as each new actor comes to it.

'Medea' is an enormous challenge for an actor physically, mentally, emotionally. You have to dig very, very deep, and to work, your performance has to be very personal.

Most of the women in Greek tragedies have their fates predetermined. The gods dictate that such and such will happen to them, and everything they predict comes true. Not Medea.

It's particularly exhausting because Medea is defined by her determination. The role is all about endeavour.

I have always thought of myself as rather a happy person. Apart from a few knocks along the way, I consider myself to have been extremely lucky.

I don't generally give interviews unless I have to promote a play and had sworn years ago, having been bitten once too often, never to be interviewed by a woman again.

It tends to be overlooked that many people are indirectly affected by thoughtless and cruel journalism.

Tabloid newspapers are very rich and hold huge funds to fight claims.

I cry all the time. Remembrance Day in particular. In fact, anything to do with veterans makes me sob.

Classes were incredibly boring. I took to dreaming. They took to punishing me. I was always working off punishments for not doing what I was supposed to do.

These days, it's perfectly normal to move between the theatre and television.

They do say that the profession gets increasingly difficult, but my career seems to have been inside out.

If it were said that I didn't fulfil my potential as a mother and wife, I'd be heartbroken. But if it were said that I hadn't fulfilled my potential as an actress, I would understand the reasons why.

It was an extremely overdramatic play called 'Wild Decembers'. It was all about the Brontes, and they all, one after the other, died of tuberculosis. I remember taking every opportunity to cough over other people's lines.

I've played the Greek classics; I've played the English classics. I promise you, I'm not complacent, because I hope to be playing all sorts of stuff that I've never played before while the mind - and the body - still functions.

Mostly what you remember and enjoy are the scenes you played with people. And quite often, they're the combative scenes!