Acting has been very useful to me.

I enjoy the crafts on the show enormously, too, when we have experts in showing how to make things. You watch them thinking you'll go home and do the things yourself, which is fun. Some I have done myself later on.

We get a lot of overseas people wanting to order cakes.

There's also something of an illusion in that, you can perhaps record a TV thing one month and complete a book the next and then be in a play. Then, if they all come out at once, it looks as if you're actually juggling a million things.

Having cakes as a business certainly changes things for me - I don't now sit at home doing a cake for the fun of it anymore. But it's an extremely happy and pleasureable business to run because people are generally buying cakes for celebrations.

I think one wants lots of different lives.

I look at myself objectively and in a way I see myself as a commodity. Your name becomes somehow outside yourself. Now, when I'm at home being Mrs. Scarfe, that's when I'm most myself.

Acting has been very useful to me.

I think all good writing is a struggle. To write as well as you feel you can has to be a struggle, almost by definition, because you could always improve.

Of all the things I do, acting is the thing that grabs most, but there's another level on which it strikes me as being a little silly. In the end you're dressing up and deciding to be somebody.

An actor's job is about putting across the author's intention; I don't think of myself on the same level as a creator.

As a child, I wanted to marry a farmer, but no doubt the reality would have been very different to the idyll in my head.

I adore food and always have.

I do enjoy fashion - a lot of runway clothes are pretty unwearable, but if moderated, the trends can be worn by just about anyone.

I do find modern jazz quite tricky.

I don't agree with the whole 'my mother's my friend' approach, because you're their mum and there has to be a difference between the generations.

I swim more or less every day.

I try to be classic without being mumsy.

I'm a creature of habit, so I like going to boutiques, rather than larger stores, where I know I'll find something that suits me every time.

I'm not advocating we should all be back in the kitchen and cooking all the time, because life's too short and we've got more interesting things to do. But to rediscover the intense pleasure of making a cake and putting it down on the table is ridiculously satisfying, out of all proportion to the work.

I've never particularly liked the idea of looking back; I'd rather look forward.

It makes me upset, if not angry, when people assume that there can be no morality without a religious framework. If there's a moral framework without all that religious stuff, it's more valuable.

Listening to my regular favourites - Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and so on - I always feel, quite misguidedly, that nothing can be too bad if such beauty and brilliance exists in the world.

My mum taught me that redheads shouldn't wear pink, red or orange, but if you choose the right shade, such as a bright orange or a cherry red, it can look fabulous.

My parents were not theatrical at all.

Thank God I've never had the sort of intense fame that means you can't walk up the road. That sort of blazing stardom must be difficult to cope with and maintain; my career has just bubbled along happily.

The rehearsal time is almost my favourite part of being an actress, particularly if you're working on a play that hasn't been done before.

Having cakes as a business certainly changes things for me I dont now sit at home doing a cake for the fun of it anymore. But its an extremely happy and pleasureable business to run because people are generally buying cakes for celebrations.

It was always part of the plan to move into acting.

Be where the acting is. I live in Houston. Dallas is 4 1/2 hours away. I let them know there's no difference.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

In Hungary, acting is a career for which one fits himself as earnestly as one studies for a degree in medicine, law, or philosophy.

I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It's passing through you more than you're creating it. You're not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.

In LA, too many people want to go the quickest route from A to B. Method acting offers them that.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I know that if I'd had to go and take an exam for acting, I wouldn't have got anywhere. You don't take exams for acting, you take your courage.

I'm not acting, but I am acting.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job.

Acting for me is not that quid pro quo.

If you're acting, then there's a prescribed way to behave; whereas in life there's no prescribed way. So acting feels like a comfortable way to get through the day.

When I was a kid, the idea of why I wanted acting to be the thing I do for the rest of my life was different. It was, Oh yeah, I'll get girls and be famous.

And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that.

I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.

It's a living, breathing thing, acting.

A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.

Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest.

I don't see my dancing or acting as two separate things. I don't define them separately, so I can't say one has helped the other, It's all the same thing. More than anything I love being on stage and performing.