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There Are Responsibilities Which Are Parental Responsibilities And Those Are The Types Of Things We Prepare The Next Generation For, But No One Tells You How To Answer The Kids' Questions In The Backseat Of The Car When They Want To Know What The World Is For Or Where They Came From Or Why Any Of This Is Happening.

-Maggie Smith

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There Are Responsibilities Which

Maggie Smith

...

There Are Responsibilities Which Are Parental Responsibilities And Those Are The Types Of Things We Prepare The Next Generation For, But No One Tells You How To Answer The Kids' Questions In The Backseat Of The Car When They Want To Know What The World Is For Or Where They Came From Or Why Any Of This Is Happening.

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People Say It Gets Better But It Doesn't. It Just Gets Different, That's All.

My Career Is Chequered. Then I Think I Got Pigeon-holed In Humour; Shakespeare Is Not My Thing.

It's Easy To Get Bogged Down In Bad News.

Listen, I Must Be 110 By Now. Granny Is Going To Kick The Bucket At Some Point.

I'm Hopeless - All I Know Is That Time Is Going Past So Fast.

Chris And Toby Are Far Too Sane To Be Upset Any More.

I Am Just Surprised To Be Doing Anything At My Age Actually. When You Think Of Where I Am Now And Where I've Come From, I Am Very Pleased And Very Grateful To Be Standing Up And Delivering Julian's Great Lines.

My Kids Are Really Learning Everything From Scratch. It's Our Job To Be Their Tour Guides And Camp Counselors And Orientation People. That's A Weird Responsibility, Especially In A World That Feels As Good As It Feels Bad.

An Actor Is Somebody Who Communicates Someone Else's Words And Emotions To An Audience. It's Not Me. It's What Writers Want Me To Be.

The Last Couple Of Years Have Been A Write-off, Though I'm Beginning To Feel Like A Person Now. My Energy Is Coming Back.

It Seems To Me There Is A Change In What Audiences Want To See…i Can Only Hope That’s Correct, Because There’s An Awful Lot Of People Of My Age Around Now And We Outnumber The Others.

I Like Being Outside And Working With The Elements. The Elemental Aspects Of It. The Physicality Of It.

I Don't Think Films About Elderly People Have Been Made Very Much.

Alan Rickman Was Such A Terrific Actor, And That Was Such A Terrific Character That He Played. And It Was A Joy To Be With Him. We Used To Laugh Together Because We Ran Out Of Reaction Shots. They Were Always - When Everything Had Been Done And The Children Were Finished, They Would Turn The Camera Around And We'd Have To Do Various Reaction Shots Of Amazement Or Sadness And Things. We Used To Say We'd Got To About Number 200-and-something And We'd Run Out Of Knowing What To Do When The Camera Came Around On Us. But He Was A Joy.

It Made It Feel Impossible, Quite Honestly, Because Filming - You Film Come Rain, Come Shine, Come Whatever. And It Did Rain A Lot. And Of Course, That's What She Must Have Gone Through. Of Course It Rained; Of Course It Was Cold... But, You Know, It Really Was Quite Hard To Be Out There In The Rain.

The Chemotherapy Was Very Peculiar, Something That Makes You Feel Much Worse Than The Cancer Itself, A Very Nasty Thing. I Used To Go To Treatment On My Own, And Nearly Everybody Else Was With Somebody. I Wouldn't Have Liked That. Why Would You Want To Make Anybody Sit In Those Places?

People Think Of You Differently If You've Been In Their Homes. They Think They Own You Because They Watched You While They Were Eating Dinner, Or They Can Turn You Up Or Down, Or Even Freeze You.

There Was Nobody In The Family Who Had Ever Done Anything Like That Before. My Brothers - I Had Two Brothers. They Were Twins. They Both Became Architects. They Were Both Six Years Older.

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I Like The Ephemeral Thing About Theatre, Every Performance Is Like A Ghost - It's There And Then It's Gone.

There Is A Kind Of Invisible Thread Between The Actor And The Audience, And When It's There It's Stunning, And There Is Nothing To Match That.

The Drama School Was In Oxford - And It's Funny To Think Of It, But In Those Days When I Started Out The University Was Nearly All Male. And They Certainly Weren't Mixed.

I'm So Moved To Hear Celia Johnson Again, So Lovely.

I Feel Now Like A Hinge Between Generations, Which Is Strange. It Just Happened Recently. I Think It's Because My Daughter Is So Much Like Me At Her Age. I Feel Like I'm Reliving My Own Mother's Experience Of Raising Me.

I Don't Think Films About Elderly People Have Been Made Very Much. I Think Of Cocoon And Driving Miss Daisy. But They Always Seem To Be Fairly Successful, So It's A Bit Baffling As To Why Everybody Has To Be Treated As If They Were Five-years-old.

There Are Responsibilities Which Are Parental Responsibilities And Those Are The Types Of Things We Prepare The Next Generation For, But No One Tells You How To Answer The Kids' Questions In The Backseat Of The Car When They Want To Know What The World Is For Or Where They Came From Or Why Any Of This Is Happening.

Try Not To Cry Too Much Because It Can Be Pretty Heart-breaking And Pretty Hard.

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I'm Far, Far, Far From That. But Of Course, That's One Of The Joys Of Acting Is That You Can Move Up In The World, Even If - You Know, In The Characters That You're Playing, Even If You Don't.

I Said 'it Can't Go On' And He Said 'no, It Can't.' Honestly, I Don't Think I Could Have Mattered Less To Him By Then. But By Then, Nothing Mattered To Him.

I Believe That I Am Past My Prime. I Had Reckoned On My Prime Lasting Till I Was At Least Fifty.

If Someone Is Going To Talk About The Process Of Making A Film, It Should Be The Director.

I Think Everybody Who Was In It Thought They Were All Going To Be Eartha Kitt Or Be Big Stars. That Didn't Happen, But It Was A Wake-up Call To Have One's First Professional Job On Broadway, I Must Say.

Little Girls, I Am In The Business Of Putting Old Heads On Young Shoulders, And All My Pupils Are The Crème De La Crème. Give Me A Girl At An Impressionable Age And She Is Mine For Life.

I Had A Very Good English Teacher Who Said To Me That She Thought I Ought To Do It. She - I Don't Know, She Saw Something Thank Goodness Because I Think If It Hadn't Been Encouraged By Somebody That Serious, I'm Not Sure What Would've Happened To Me.

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I'm Not My Mother. And So I'm Not Raising My Kids In The Same Way. I Don't Respond In The Same Way. We Don't Spend Our Days In The Same Way Because I Don't Necessarily Enjoy The Same Things She Likes To Do.

I Find It Very Difficult To Do Anything On My Own Now Because People Recognize Me. This Has Never Happened To Me Before Because I Haven't Really Done Television Before. But I Suppose If You're In People's Rooms All The Time, I Don't Know - I Was Thinking The Other Night With People Like Dicaprio And, You Know, Those Big Stars And Cate Blanchett, And You Just Think How Did They Exist? It's So Difficult. And I Think Now It's Very Intrusive Because Of These Cellphones, You Know, With Cameras.

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Don't Be Defeatist, Dear, It's Very Middle Class.

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