QUOTES

I love to have no plans. It is amazing where your day can turn when you have no plans: meeting people or just going to a little pub on the side of the road.

Michael Lewis has the amazing ability to take complex formulas and concepts and turn them into page-turners.

George Lazenby was ill-equipped. It's not for nothing that they didn't offer him any sequels.

There are those who have a knowledge and passion for the theatre, and those who don't.

I don't mean to be oily, but critics are very much part of the theatre.

Once, when I was playing a nude scene in an indifferent play in New York, a critic wrote, 'Diana Rigg is built like a brick basilica with too few flying buttresses.' Do you think that's fair?

I've been utterly and completely castigated from time to time.

I would like to keep working forever. As long as they will have me.

It would be nice if they didn't make me get up at 5 A.M. for a 12-hour day. My caravan is never big enough to lie down. There is no little doze. You are knackered by the time you get home. Knackered.

I would head to the countryside for peace and silence. That would be the best way, away from panicked, hysterical people.

I am not aware of fans, because I don't live that sort of life, but I am awfully grateful.

The first time Rachie and I will be working together is on an episode of 'Doctor Who' specially written for us by Mark Gatiss. How lucky is that?

I have no way of comparing myself to other people my age; I can't compare myself with Jane Fonda, can I? I haven't had the work done. I admire the discipline of someone who maintains that degree of beauty, but I'm not prepared to do it.

I don't mind getting old except for the pain. I have two new knees, so going downstairs is not perfect. Nobody tells you about the pain.

You have to have the same power to lead the life you want as a man does, and that means earning the same amount of money. We still have a battle on our hands with that.

I've been in the business 60 years, and it's taken me this long to play a scene with a monkey. That's what happens if you stick around.

I find the whole feminist thing very boring. They are so much on the defensive that they dare not love a man because they feel assaulted by being dependent.

Years ago I was at a function, and I must have said something really rude to Paul Daniels the magician. I can't recall what I said, but I remember him looking utterly crestfallen. I'm not that sort of person, but I must have said something very cutting and belittling. Our paths haven't crossed since, but if they had, I would have said sorry to him.

I think you have to know someone to truly dislike them, don't you? That said, I'd shove most politicians into a cauldron and boil them up.

I was nice and well-mannered because I was taught manners. I was very imaginative and quite adventurous. I was a tomboy, and I was always jealous that my older brother Hugh had bigger toy aeroplanes than me. I was always playing with boys' toys; I don't remember owning any dolls.

I was very, very young, living in India. I'd been put to bed in the afternoon, and I had that lovely feeling you have when you're about to nod off. I remember the yellow curtains of the room blowing in the wind and feeling blissfully happy and content.

There were no prototypes for me - the telly was full of little blonde juveniles.

I'd love to have done more film, but you can't have everything.

An awful lot of actors shy away from the uglier aspects of the human condition. They want to be liked, which is a cop-out. You've got to go for it.

I only know how to play bad mums because they're the best parts.

I get tetchy with myself when I forget. I also get tetchy when directors ask you for take after take after take after take for no apparent reason. I've heard Maggie Smith gets tetchy for the same reason.

I'm an old bag for the most part on 'Game Of Thrones', so it's so lovely to be glamorous - as glamorous as you can be at my age!

The opportunity to be bizarre - I am bizarre, aren't I? - is just so wonderful, isn't it?

Television has taught me an economy of style I didn't have before. I feel it has done me nothing but good.

I'm in a position to do exactly what I want. I travel quite a lot. I read prodigiously. I go to the theater, to concerts. London is a wonderful city to live in.