It was in India that I started my acting career, courtesy of my parents, long before I set foot on stage in England. They headed a company of travelling players performing Shakespeare up and down the land.

In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things.

Every woman feels she is too old and has missed the boat.

I think very few people do find a relationship where, every moment of every day, everything they do comes together. That's why, in a nutshell, everyone loved Barbara in 'The Good Life.' She was the perfect partner. It was a formula. She wasn't glamorous. She wasn't clever. But she was a good partner. That's too easy, too perfect.

Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich language of Shakespeare's plays at which, by then, I was something of an old hand.

I don't think, until you've actually lost somebody you really love, that you can go through that door that allows you to be grown-up.

Success breeds success, and failure leads to a sort of fallow period.

There is the most wonderful thing called Polaris: it's a very high frequency laser treatment that lifts and tightens the skin.

It's nice not to have lines when you frown, especially on TV. I don't know why people make such a fuss about it. No one is interested if a woman has her teeth capped or her hair dyed.

For me, compatibility is a sense of humour, being able to laugh together that is very important.

So many roles for women demand that you make the audience fall in love with you or sympathise with you.

There is one sure way of telling when politicians aren't telling the truth - their lips move.

The gym is where I get my chill-out time. I try to go six days a week, but when I'm working, that goes down to about three.

I'm not very much of a foodie I like small amounts of delicious things, but I've never overeaten - I'd much rather have a glass of wine.

My parents were very volatile but very loving. My father would get jealous if my mother looked at somebody. I used to be insanely jealous. It comes out of insecurity. It can come and go, but you get to the point in life where you don't have this raging jealousy and protectiveness about your world.

I hope to start enjoying flirting again when I'm 70, like my mother did.