Maggie Smith Quotes

"I tend to head for what's amusing because a lot of things aren't happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything."

"I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone."

"There's a difference between solitude and loneliness."

"It's true I don't tolerate fools but then they don't tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that's why I'm quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies."

"People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all."

"I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect."

"It seems to me there is a change in what audiences want to see. I can only hope that's correct, because there's an awful lot of people of my age around now and we outnumber the others."

"I have many good friends, but I tend to keep to myself anyway. It's odd, doing things and having no one to share them with."

"I said 'It can't go on' and he said 'No, it can't.' Honestly, I don't think I could have mattered less to him by then. But by then, nothing mattered to him."

"Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more."

"There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk."

"The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage."

"The last couple of years have been a write-off, though I'm beginning to feel like a person now. My energy is coming back."

"I had been feeling a little rum. I didn't think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails, and I don't know what the future holds, if anything."

"My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing."

"There is a kind of invisible thread between the actor and the audience, and when it's there it's stunning, and there is nothing to match that."

"I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it."

"When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything."

"I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty."

"The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them."

"Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point."

"People think of you differently if you've been in their homes. They think they own you because they watched you while they were eating dinner, or they can turn you up or down, or even freeze you."

"I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad."

"I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much."

"Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary."

"I fear that I won't work in the theatre again. I'm sad about that. But I won't retire."

"I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen."

"Some people say you have to fight cancer. But it was fighting me. The cure was worse than the disease, and it left me totally exhausted and depressed. I just hid myself away in my daughter-in-law's flat."

"I know there is something out there, and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. But I'm not like Shirley MacLaine, who probably believes we were past lovers in another life."

"I loved Robert Altman, so gentle yet naughty! And Julian Fellowes writes so beautifully."