Jean Marsh

“The world's full of possibilities.”

“In America, I worked for an artist who drew people in clothes, mainly for Bloomingdale's. I did it part-time when I wasn't working as an actress.”

“Why would an actress retire? We don't have to because, when we are older, we can play older parts. Even if you are in a wheelchair you can go on working.”

“I had an apartment right on the sea front and the light would bounce into the rooms. I was on a wonderful footpath that went all the way around Cardiff Bay and it was just beautiful.”

“There's something about the British that we go for someone who seems nice and has good manners and seems at ease thanks to their education... We love that.”

“It was amazing. I had had a stroke and a heart attack but I knew I'd be all right. I think it's because I'm an actress.”

“I was married very young, but it didn't work out.”

“I suppose I do have a kind of quiet energy and I'm enchanted by people. I look at them and think: 'Oh, he's bought a wonderful knobbly carrot.' Everything I notice.”

“We'd been watching something full of rich people, rich food, beautiful clothes and we had chips on our shoulders, I suppose. And we thought, who did all this work? Who cooked? Who washed up? All those things we put together and thought, 'Let's write something about the downstairs people, the servants, the people who serve.'”

“When you do a television series like 'Upstairs, Downstairs' - it took five years - you want to go back to the theater.”

“I don't have ladylike clothes, because I live in the country in England.”

“I can't believe in humorless women. I think there's humor even in everyday tragedy.”

“For years I hated my looks. I kept pictures of myself hidden, but I never destroyed them.”

“We lived in two rooms, sharing a kitchen and bathroom. We moved a lot - I suspect because we couldn't pay the rent.”

“If English television is made for the American market, it's not very honest and doesn't do well.”