Maggie Smith

“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...”

“The chemotherapy was very peculiar, something that makes you feel much worse than the cancer itself, a very nasty thing. I used to go to treatment on my own, and nearly everybody else was wi...”

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

“There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.”

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

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

“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...”

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

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

“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-i...”

“I've been playing old parts forever. I play 93 quite often. When you've done it more than once, you take the hint. I think it's a great burden if you're one of those fantastic stars who've a...”

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

“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.”

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

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

“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 an...”

“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.”

“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.”