My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors.

It's sometimes shocking to find out what people really believe in.

I wish I could believe that one person could make a difference.

As you get older, you realize it's work. It's that fine line between love and companionship. But passionate love? I'd love to know how to make that last.

I never wanted to do political satire because it seems too surface to me.

It makes you more open, it gives you perspective, having a child.

I loved the late Gilda Radner. I love Carol Burnett and Lily Tomlin.

Why does everyone think the future is space helmets, silver foil, and talking like computers, like a bad episode of Star Trek?

I'm usually put off by performers when they get political.

I like infomercials.

I used to dress up and impersonate our next-door neighbor, Miss Cox. She wore rubber boots, a wool hat, and her nose always dripped.

I've never looked ahead very much in my life. I've never had any grand plan from the outset. I had no burning ambition to do what I do.

It's funny - if you impersonate somebody, they have no idea it's them.

I love John Waters. There's stuff in it that's beyond the boundaries of my taste, but his movies have always been like that.

The show I did in England catered to a broad range of people. I like that. I don't want nouveau cult status, though I know we've got that sort of audience in the states.

I think serial monogamy says it all.

I'm not a crazy, party-going sort of person.

You become so encapsulated in this world of being a star. People listen to what you say, you have this voice, it becomes unreal and you become far removed from the people you came from.

Every character I do is based on someone I know.

I'm as famous as I want to be.

I'm still that little girl who lisped and sat in the back of the car and threw vegetables at the back of her head when we drove home from the market. That never goes.

There are different types of love, and my love for my child is like me and my mum. We've gone through a lot of rocky patches, but we never stop loving.

As I get older, I just prefer to knit.

Maybe when I'm 75 and living in the south of France, after everyone I want to bitch about is already dead, then I may want to talk about my life in Hollywood.

My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors.

I don't get very involved in the L.A. scene. When you do get invited out, you are expected to be on all the time. It's just wearying.

I like going to France, because no one knows who I am.

I hate clowns.

It's the poignancy and sadness in things that gets to me.

I hope I never get so hard up I have to do advertisements. I've gotten ridiculous offers.

Work is important to me. I want to do things for principle, not just for the sake of doing them.

I worked with Paul McCartney for a while and saw what it does to you to be treated like a god for twenty years.

A lot of stand-up comedy is embarrassing: too many idiots doing it in orange neckties against brick walls. I find most sitcoms embarrassing, too, because they seem so forced.

An M.P. once suggested I be put in the Tower of London for saying derogatory things about the royals. There's no First Amendment in my country.

Great pressure is put on kids who don't have dads to get out and make money, and make life easier for everybody. It was always, 'Hurry up, grow up, make money, there's no man to do it for us.'

I don't see myself as a stand-up comic doing cynical, mean-spirited or disrespectful stuff. I'm very aware that I don't like to disrespect people too much.

I just want to do good work.

I'm fascinated by Bollywood.

I've always gotten a positive reaction to doing African-American characters.

It's like a woman's birthright to knit. It's primal. It's timeless. You don't need electricity to knit. You can do it with a candle, girls!

My mum would like to see me on the cover of 'Good Housekeeping' demonstrating children's toys with some nice lipstick on.

The working classes in England were always sentimental, and the Irish and Scots and Welsh. The upper-class English are the stiff-upper-lipped ones. And the middle class. They're the ones who are crippled emotionally because they can't move up, and they're desperate not to move down.

As soon as you find the key to success, somebody always changes the lock.

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

I've seen many actors go awry by making the wrong choices early on.

Actors are able to trick themselves into treating anything as if it's fantastic. It's a kind of madness really.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.