There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness.
Maggie Smith
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?
Maggie Smith
I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost – it’s there and then it’s gone.
Maggie Smith
Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.
Maggie Smith
I have many good friends, but I tend to keep to myself anyway. It’s odd, doing things and having no one to share them with.
Maggie Smith
When you get into the granny era, you’re lucky to get anything.
Maggie Smith
It’s true I don’t tolerate fools but then they don’t tolerate me, so I am spiky. Maybe that’s why I’m quite good at playing spiky elderly ladies.
Maggie Smith
I had been feeling a little rum. I didn’t think it was anything serious because years ago I felt a lump and it was benign. I assumed this would be too. It kind of takes the wind out of your sails, and I don’t know what the future holds, if anything.
Maggie Smith
People say it gets better but it doesn’t. It just gets different, that’s all.
Maggie Smith
Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.
Maggie Smith
I loved Robert Altman, so gentle yet naughty! And Julian Fellowes writes so beautifully.
Maggie Smith
The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.
Maggie Smith
I’ve been playing old parts forever. I play 93 quite often. When you’ve done it more than once, you take the hint. I think it’s a great burden if you’re one of those fantastic stars who’ve always been beautiful; then I think it’s hard.
Maggie Smith
When I started acting almost 50 years ago, it wasn’t about fame. It was about acting.
Maggie Smith
If you’re lucky, I think you know what you want to do with your life. I think that’s a greater gift that any of the gifts you might have when you do know, if you know what I mean. It must be awful to not know what to do.
Maggie Smith
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.
Maggie Smith
Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more.
Maggie Smith
There’s this wonderful first assistant and he’ll be saying, ‘Now Harry goes down among the dragons.’ You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you’re sunk.
Maggie Smith
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.
Maggie Smith
My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.
Maggie Smith
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.
Maggie Smith
I tend to head for what’s amusing because a lot of things aren’t happy. But usually you can find a funny side to practically anything.
Maggie Smith
I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.
Maggie Smith
I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect.
Maggie Smith
I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.
Maggie Smith
The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn’t ask them.
Maggie Smith
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.
Maggie Smith
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.
Maggie Smith
I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad.
Maggie Smith
I don’t think films about elderly people have been made very much.
Maggie Smith
Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary.
Maggie Smith
I fear that I won’t work in the theatre again. I’m sad about that. But I won’t retire.
Maggie Smith
I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn’t really happen.
Maggie Smith
Some people say you have to fight cancer. But it was fighting me. The cure was worse than the disease, and it left me totally exhausted and depressed. I just hid myself away in my daughter-in-law’s flat.
Maggie Smith
I know there is something out there, and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. But I’m not like Shirley MacLaine, who probably believes we were past lovers in another life.
Maggie Smith
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.
Maggie Smith
I think lots of actors are very nervous and shy. I know lots of them who are, and some who aren’t of course.
Maggie Smith
I do love comedy, and when it’s a comedy moment and you can make people laugh, of course it is wonderful.
Maggie Smith