Sheila Hancock

“I'm dirty in an argument; I'll win by any method. But I change my mind all the time and I will admit when I'm wrong.”

“You know, life is about loss and recovering and starting again. It gets a bit more difficult to start again the older you get. But you can do it, you can do it.”

“In 1971, my mother died of cancer and within a year my first husband Alec Ross died, also from cancer.”

“In the old days I'd like to have been a politician, when I think the world was more idealistic. When I was young I did a lot of campaigning.”

“You have to be very careful about your mental health.”

“I live in a perpetual state of fear.”

“What I would love to do is more telly comedy. I did a tiny bit in 'Toast of London' and was in one episode of Catherine Tate's 'Nan.' I was crying with laughter.”

“You're never going to get 2,400 people a night for a play. I'm sorry, you really aren't.”

“I was chancellor of Portsmouth University.”

“When you've been bereaved, you expect other people to rescue you, but I'm afraid they can't - it's down to you.”

“I used to be the sort of person who'd listen to a taxi driver going on about the-country-going-to-the-dogs-blah-blah, and let him rant on. But now I don't. I find myself letting rip.”

“In some ways I'm quite strict - in terms of morality, honesty, things like that. And manners.”

“I always find it a bit embarrassing when people sing 'Auld Lang Syne.' Nobody knows when it finishes, so it goes on and on.”

“Like Pinter and Orton, the writer, Clive Exton, catches the poetry of modern everyday speech, which, whether we like it or not, includes four-letter words used as verbs, nouns, adverbs and adjectives. But, God, is it difficult to learn.”

“Being a grandma is lovely.”

“We should be so grateful for musicals, and the amount of work that goes into these shows is easily comparable to things I've been in at the National and the RSC. Why do we think it is less important?.”

“I used to pray every night: 'Please let me look all right from the front.' I didn't care about real life, but I wanted to look good for theatre audiences - I worried about having a funny nose.”

“Prompting children to create imaginary worlds is hugely important.”

“I talk too much and I don't listen or pause to think.”

“I'm wildly left wing, but I'm also a terrible chauvinist.”