Lindsay Duncan

“Deep down, I think I would be utterly miserable in Hollywood.”

“I'm perfectly gregarious, but I can also be really happy left to my own devices with nobody watching me or listening to me.”

“No matter how much we disagree with people, demonising them doesn't get us anywhere; it merely indicates a closed mind.”

“It's an important point to make that people can't just be invalidated, eradicated, because they don't fit tidily into a box. And more and more, the modern world is all about conformity.”

“I want to have the career that is my choice - what interests me, what doesn't. I feel more and more strongly about that.”

“You always remember the delicacy of the work you do on a new play - the delicacy and the rigor and the courage.”

“I know I'll always work. In what form, it really doesn't matter.”

“I don't perform well in private. Socially, I mean. And I didn't as a child. Actors aren't necessarily outgoing, are they?”

“I have done some wonderful television, but you know, there's not as much exceptional material as there is in the theatre. So I do a lot of theatre, but really, as with most actors, I just love going from one to another. It's stimulating, it's diverting, it's a different way of life, and you know, I dearly like a good mix.”

“I was the suburban kid of Scottish parents, and the idea of an acting career was so beyond my experience. I didn't even know there were drama schools until a friend told me.”

“I desperately wanted to play the part of Darth Vader's mother - I think she ended up being played by a Scandinavian actress - because my son was completely crazy about 'Star Wars.'”

“My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.”

“I have the highest regard for Meryl Streep as an actress and think she's a fabulous person as well.”

“My mother was always deeply attracted to anything medical, and I think she would have loved me to have been a doctor. My father was in the army for 21 years, came out just before I was born. There was no history of showbusiness on either side of the family, but they were completely supportive.”

“I do feel almost violent when I'm watching things that I don't think are good enough. I get furious for the audience. I want to say to them, 'This play is not supposed to be like this. They've got it completely wrong. You should be electrified by this.'”

“My parents' generation was definitely pre-telly, and they knew how to entertain each other. Everybody knew something that they could do - a song or a poem, or a piece of music. At school, I remember being a cat and then a budgie and then a bumble bee. I obviously thought all that was marvelous.”

“I would rather give up acting than become world famous, because I think you pay a very high price. Writing and putting new plays out into the world has informed what I do, and I've had a lot more freedom to play really interesting parts.”

“I suppose because I do and can work in the theatre, I don't see work as closing down as an older woman.”

“A certain amount of anger doesn't make us less empathetic, less humane, less loving. It just makes us real.”

“That kind of creaming off the pretty postcard image of the past, I think, is a road to nowhere.”