My mother was right: When you've got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust.

I grind my teeth and keep my thumbs in so tight that I've dislocated them, just not to scream. Sometimes as an actor one is lucky enough to be asked to scream.

I only like boutiques.

Any film I see at two o'clock in afternoon with my mother seems to cast a strange spell that means we both come out sobbing.

If you fall in love with a country and its people, that makes any country warm to you.

I know what it's like to have someone coming home who looks at you not in the way they used to in the old days, and I've seen my own face contorted with sadness and rage in the mirror.

I love Dickens because it makes me chuckle to myself so. He has taken me to another world and out of so many earthly miseries.

I don't know why people keep banging on about the '60s. I came from a conventional family and I didn't go off with different people - I rather wish I had now, seeing all the fun everyone else was having.

Robert Louis Stevenson... I'm focusing on the late short stories that I was ignorant of. I always thought he was a boys' author, but he's not at all.

I'd rather live on my own than live with a face that looks at me with the wrong eyes.

He painted me when I was young because he was in love with me, but now that he has loved me he doesn't paint me anymore.

Keep smiling - it takes 10 years off!

When I was at school I used to scream in trains, in those concertina things between the carriages. I used to try to be so good that sometimes I couldn't bear it any more.

My mother was right: When you've got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust.

People always like things that seem exotic.

If I were mayor, I'd invite everyone to have free boat trips on the river and free balloon rides over the city. I'd let the elderly in residential homes wander free.

Big Ben... hearing the chimes makes me feel at home.

David Attenborough... has that wonderful, breathy voice, and he's always so fascinated by what he's seeing. There's nothing about him that I can't find attractive.

I colour my hair mousy brown and I wear makeup only on stage. I use Laura Mercier - something called Biscuit, I think. I run one tiny sponge over my face and cover the red blotches. If I've got some rouge, I'll bung it on my mouth and cheeks.

I don't like getting older, but there's nothing I can do. Hitting 60 wasn't great, but I think I was lucky in not being that beautiful; it can be really cruel on people who have been stunning.

I feel most comfortable in an old pair of jeans, Converse, and a man's jersey. My best friend cuts my hair with kitchen scissors.

It's usually a jolly good trick to pick up a local tour guide. They can tell you all the anecdotes that make a place interesting. I'm one for rushing off to museums at the crack of dawn, eating fabulous things on terraces for lunch, and enjoying long dinners on balmy evenings.

My distinguishing feature is the gap between my teeth. I had to wear a brace because my teeth used to stick out like guns from a fortress.

My father was a painter, so I was encouraged to take a sketchbook everywhere. Cameras are perishable, but I still have tonnes of sketchbooks from all the trips I've ever been on. It gets you by when you don't know what to give people as a gift; drawings are good souvenirs.

Nothing has ever touched on what fun childhood was. Summer holidays were bliss. We made home movies, with real stories in them. My father had such charm and charisma, and made everything so funny.

When my father died, my mother came back from being Mrs. Birkin to being Judy Campbell. She was a stunning actress. She came out of her shell. She was herself again: this very independent, funny, intellectual lady - and was able to perform again, which was her life before meeting my father squashed it out.

When you start recognising that you're having fun, life can be delightful.

My look is a cocktail. I’m not as nicely turned out as the french, but I don’t care like the English.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

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.

Bambi has a profound effect on children because it's about losing your mother.

For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.

I never turned down a mother role.

I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

My mother is Irish, my father is black and Venezuelan, and me - I'm tan, I guess.

I loved my mother, she's a good girl.

A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.

Just as a mother finds pleasure in taking her little child on her lap, there to feed and caress him, in like manner our loving God shows His fondness for His beloved souls who have given themselves entirely to Him and have placed all their hope in His goodness.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

Most turkeys taste better the day after, my mother's tasted better the day before.

During my grief, I realised there was nothing I could do for my mother, but I did have a child.

That's so different in Hong Kong when I'm using my own mother language, I can treat the line in one thousand different ways, with many different reactions.

I am scared of becoming a mother.

My mother liked Jim Reeves. I hated his records. He was unbearable.

The eyebrow pencil and false eyelashes were essential; my mother didn't feel dressed without them.

When I was 13 I asked my mother if it was possible for this to end - I'd had enough of it. And that was right about the time that we got a call for "The Exorcist" interview.

Middle age is the awkward period when Father Time starts catching up with Mother Nature.

I think it's time to do clean-up for a generation. I believe this is one of the movies that hits home for all colors and all races. Everybody I talk to, black or white, suburban, rich or poor, can relate to rejection, can relate to not having a father or a mother.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.