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I'm always fearful. … Fear generates in you a huge energy. You can use it. When I feel that mounting fear, I think, 'Oh, yes, there it is!' It's like petrol.
Everything, every part that you approach has to be somehow rooted in yourself. You have to somehow root everything so that it's not just words coming out of you.
And then it was working with Bob Hoskins, who I had never worked with before - except radio. It was like being given a wonderful meal - full of the things you love most.
In the theatre you can change things ever so slightly; it's an organic thing. Whereas in film you only have that chance on the day, and you have no control over it at all.
Since Michael died I think I've worked constantly. Friends and colleagues are very sustaining. They're the people who get you through it... It's no good to be on your own.
I get sillier as I get older, so I don't know what wisdom means. I can only pass on something that I've been acquainted with and let whomever it is pick the bones out of it
I felt quite a responsibility when I played Elizabeth I but nobody here remembers her! And then I felt a responsibility when I played Queen Victoria but not many people remember her.
Some things you know about, you know what the ingredients are - maybe not all of them. But it's up to you to put in the amount. It's up to the director to nag you until you get it right.
I've always loved painting, although I never show anyone what I've done. Mainly because I don't do it well. But it's like a form of visual diary for me. A way of fixing things in my mind.
Filming is completely - was totally new to me ... I had a movie career which wasn't supposed to be, so I couldn't be more thrilled. For those who work, parts seem to get more interesting.
I was in Yorkshire. We were a family of five and I used to be sent sometimes to get the rations for the week and was easily able to carry them back. It was like one egg and a tiny bit of tea.
I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it's like a template; I'll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I'm all right.
I was in Yorkshire. We were a family of five and I used to be sent sometimes to get the rations for the week and I was easily able to carry them back. It was like one egg and a tiny bit of tea.
I just feel incredibly lucky to be employed when there are so many actors and actresses who are not employed. That's why, you know, I sometimes feel desperate, in case I'm not going to be cast again.
I couldn't be a one-woman show, since I wouldn't have anybody to bounce off from. Once you're out there, dribbling on, you have nobody to interrupt you. I love being part of a company, and telling a story.
I'm very conscious that I'm in the minority in that I love what I do. How big is the number of people who are running to work to do a job that they like? And how lucky to be employed at it - how incredibly lucky.
Having a daughter and a grandson, I certainly could relate to the fact that this child, who you simply dote on, being taken away from you at an early age, and every single kind of emotion you would have to go through.
I started off as a theatre designer, and by some extraordinary circumstance I saw something in Stratford-upon-Avon, and realized that that's the kind of design I want, but also that that's the kind of designer I'll never be.
I think you've got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other.
Children have become disengaged from nature and we need to reintroduce them to the pleasure that it brings. If we do that they will care for it. Through the simple act of planting a tree we can open their eyes to nature's beauty.
I've figured out what to do so far, but it's always the next thing you come to where the man with the bucket of ice cold water is waiting - whoosh! in your face. That's why you work with directors who know what to tell you to do.
One of the benefits of being a mature well-educated woman is that you're not afraid of expletives. And you have no fear to put a fool in his place. That's the power of language and experience. You can learn a lot from Shakespeare.
Michael died five years ago this January, and the first thing that really struck me about the script was the part about her peeling off from the funeral and just getting into a rowboat and having a real kind of cry where nobody was.
I think you can teach people a technique - you can teach them how to use their voices, how to breathe properly, how to move their limbs a certain way. But to actually explain how one performs comedy or drama or tragedy isn't the same as the movements one makes.
We know about the issue of children being sold and adopted and taken away but what is so extraordinary is how these two people come through something like - how both of them do, in actual fact. I think that she's one of the most considerable people I've ever met, Philomena.
I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.
I once said to someone when I was playing Lady Macbeth and they said: "That's tricky, emotionally, what do you do about murdering your husband's cousin?" And there are, of course, things that aren't in your personal repertoire that you have to somehow understand by reading or watching other things and listening to other people talk about them.
The secret of my success is my mother, who was from Dublin. All my relations are in Dublin or in the west, or as I found out, we went to Rostrevor in Northern Ireland to film and I got out, while they changed cars around, and this man said to me: "You know you have cousins in this town? And they're coming down to see you..." And so they did. I'm sorry we didn't go to a lot more places, so that I could find a lot more cousins. So, that was good. It's entirely because my father was also brought up in Dublin. So, that's my link.