Jane Birkin

“I put some red stuff on my mouth and cheeks so I look healthy - any old red lip pencil and a lip colour from Dr. Hauschka in a crushed berry tone. I never put anything on my eyes, or I look like Joan Crawford.”

“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 can't be the only person in the world to have three different husbands, and yet those relationships are never talked about.”

“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.”

“Keep smiling - it takes 10 years off!”

“I think I did a lot of humorous films when I was young, and they were No. 1 films.”

“At school, I used to hear, 'You're a half-caste.' They'd laugh at my figure and say, 'Are you a boy or a girl?'”

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

“There's no fun in a bag if it's not kicked around so that it looks as if the cat's been sitting on it - and it usually has. The cat may even be in it! I always put on stickers and beads and worry beads. You can get them from Greece, Israel, Palestine - from anywhere in the world.”

“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.”

“I never have more than one bag at a time. I think one is already quite enough. Also, I hate changing bags, so I never have the thing of having ten bags. Any bag that's with me will take the same course as I will. It will take the same airplanes and will be squashed in the same way and will be used as a cushion in the airports.”

“A Birkin bag is a very good rain hat; just put everything else in a plastic bag.”

“I love the French very much, and I think they know that. I've been adopted here. They treat me as one of their own.”

“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 have to be careful not to get a paunch - I'm so skinny that if I put any weight anywhere, it'd be there, and I don't like a bulge. I wouldn't mind if it went on my bosom, but it doesn't.”

“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.”

“People always like things that seem exotic.”

“I use Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream, £12, on my lips, and my arms if they're sunburned. I'm past caring that sunbathing is dangerous.”

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

“Without my specs on, I think I look really great; then I put them on, and I scream. But at 62, I still think less is better. I use Clarins foundation, but I don't put it everywhere - I hate that covered look - so just on the sides of my nose where the veins have gone bang.”