Tamsin Greig

“I've been so amazed at the number of really professional top-of-their-game women who I know to be intelligent, well educated and brilliant who have said, 'What was it like to snog Matt LeBlanc?'”

“In theatre, there's no time for a proper meal.”

“Maybe this whole obsession about colouring our hair is about our inability to grow up. To let go of the fact we aren't children any more, and the whole thing about changing our faces and looking young, and 60 being the new 40, is maybe we don't want to let go of our childhood.”

“You step over the threshold of your parents' home, and you're instantly transported back to your childhood. It's like time travel. You revert at once to a place of arrested development.”

“Laughing and crying are very similar. They're an extreme response to life. You see it in children who start laughing hysterically.”

“I cannot step into any day without help. I have a fantastically engaged husband who is very present for his children and our family life. We've got a brilliant nanny, other help from parents-in-law, godparents, friends. Also, I've had incredible women around me in the business.”

“I'm quite an odd little part of the Venn diagram. I'm not a movie star and beautiful in that way. I do an odd thing that's funny and sad, and my face and my old body can take that.”

“I've been acting since I could function. I got into acting to get attention as a child.”

“Kids have a great sense of humour. If you don't, you're going to miss out.”

“I work in Britain, where women are allowed to look their age.”

“I don't ever want to do stuff just for the sake of it.”

“I think comedy stems from being honest, often painfully so. I hope I can achieve that perspective in my own life and also have fun.”

“I think if you're trying to be funny, sometimes you're bending a piece of metal in a direction it doesn't want to go. And sometimes comedy just needs to find itself.”

“A lot of middle-aged women are children still trying to find their way.”

“I always said there's no way I'd work in America because I'm too weird and I'm too old, but somehow it's happened.”

“Writers have to be very careful and discerning because so much of the machine is out of their control.”

“I know I don't fit in in L.A. because I look my age.”

“I'll read a recipe but then decide, 'Well, it's sort of like this, then.' Or I'll go to the fridge and think, 'I'll see what I can put together,' and I'll combine beetroot and sausage and prawns with goat's cheese sprinkled on top and think, 'I like that they're all slightly pink. It looks fine and... actually, it is fine.'”

“Going to rehearsals of school plays got me out of science. It became clear what inspired me and what dampened my spirit. The only other thing I could do at school was trampolining - it didn't seem to have much future in it.”

“Dad was a retired chemist who, in his 60s, fathered and fed me and my two sisters while Mum worked as a secretary. He made us curries, Chinese meals and strange concoctions. He was often unsuccessful.”