Hayley Mills

I have a horror of being in confined spaces.

My best feature is my hair.

Wherever I am in the world, I never get Sunday night blues. I suppose it's because I've never worked at any one thing long enough to start hating it.

In my life, things have happened to me. I've never felt I was controlling anything.

There's such an energy bounding around New York, I can't help but get swept along in it.

Do I think I'm under-educated? Academically, absolutely. I never took any exams, no O- or A-levels.

Once cancer happens it changes the way you live for the rest of your life.

I always say a tremendous amount of healing is in your own hands.

Roses are my favourite flower, and my mum always grew a lot of them.

I have a lot of mirrors around my house, not because I like to look at myself, but because I like the light and perspective they bring to a room.

I'm a lazy creature when I'm not acting.

I live in jeans and own a lot of them. I'm much more comfortable in trousers and T-shirts, and I don't often wear dresses.

Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes.

I like solitary pursuits, such as reading or pottering about in the garden.

I admire tremendously those people who work consistently at the same jobs.

My sons are precious to me and I have tried incredibly hard to strike the right balance between work and home life while being acutely aware that I haven't always got it right.

My father was an inspiration to me; I made a few movies with him and I loved working with him. Everything about him - his whole approach to work, as well as his love, enthusiasm and respect for it and other people in the business - was inspiring. I was very lucky to have him as a role model.

I cry in movies a lot, and over books.

There are some fantastic, brilliant alternative doctors out there.

If ever I feel I might be able to tackle it, I'd love to try holding a spear or something in the theater, or opening a door, or anything, just to try it, you know, because it must be some marvelous magic thing.

It doesn't make sense that there is only one way of dealing with cancer.

Even when I became the typical shy adolescent, I never minded performing. I felt there was a kind of safety, a protection about being on stage, about losing myself in another character.

When you start acting as a child, you grow up ahead of your movies.