Anne Reid

“I think people can't believe I can still walk and talk and get on the stage without assistance.”

“We are just party people. We always had a drink in the evening with the music on and space to dance. It was that kind of a family.”

“I'm more temperamental. As I've got older, I've become more demanding.”

“In my day, the films you got were about mature people, people with some kind of weight.”

“Your confidence is destroyed when you find out you can't trust people.”

“I now do my own cabaret act, singing and telling stories about my life.”

“Now that I know about my great-great-grandfather, I feel that John Reid and I would have got on well together.”

“You can wear yourself out by saying yes to things you don't want to do, and nobody really minds if you say no. I enjoy my own company. I'm never at a loss for things to do.”

“I did go to public school, but that's only because my parents were abroad. As a matter of fact, I think that's helped my work. I can go from Victoria Wood's 'Dinnerladies' to playing Barbara Cartland, from 'Coronation Street' to playing Celia in Last 'Tango'.”

“I'm not really emotionally dependant on anybody except my son, my daughter-in-law, and my grandchildren. But a partner... I haven't felt like that for so many years, I don't really remember what it was like.”

“I think that the romantic suspense that you used to get between people like Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant is much sexier than seeing people taking their clothes off and getting into bed, which is voyeurism.”

“I've accepted stuff even if it's a few lines, because I think it's better to be seen.”

“'Downton' took a long time to catch fire in America, but we have been getting good reviews for 'Tango.'”

“Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company - what a wonderful woman.”

“I think it's such a clever idea, that you fall in love when you're 16, and then you have this fantasy about that person for the rest of your life.”

“I'm enormously proud of being the ancestor of a convict. That's mad, isn't it, but I really am.”

“Get an Alan Bennett script; then everybody will want to do it, no matter how big they are.”

“I like waking up in the morning and thinking, 'Mmm, I might go to Paris today.' I don't want to ask anyone if they want to come with me or mind me going. I like being my own agent. I have my grandsons and son. If I didn't have them, it would be different.”

“I don't ever think of myself as coming from a particular class because my father was working class but made his living as a newspaper foreign correspondent - someone of no fixed abode, as he used to say - who was as comfortable dining with the Mountbattens in India as he was having a pint with the boys. He was very gregarious.”

“Inner talent gives you that ease. It's not a remarkable thing - just a knack that gives you a very nice life.”