33 Quotes by Eileen Atkins

I don't believe in remaking television series. I should never have agreed to reviving 'Upstairs Downstairs' because my heart wasn't in it, but part of me did think about my pension.

Wheels come off? Get on with it. Cope. Survive.

It's extraordinary to hear waves of laughter after you've been playing something, night after night, to nothing. That's why I'm still hooked on acting: the terror of the possibility of things going wrong, the thrill when they go right, and the joy of the company.

My grammar school caught on to the fact that the reason I was falling asleep in class was that I was doing working men's clubs till 10 or 11 at nights. My mother was told I shouldn't do it anymore. Of course, I was bringing in money to the family, so nobody liked hearing that.

On the street where I lived, they almost didn't know the word 'university,' and my mother was simply appalled when it was suggested to her that I was to go to a drama college.

My parents felt so uncomfortable coming to the kind of theater I was in; they had nothing to say about it.

Film was something I didn't really think about when I was young, because if you looked like me, you weren't a film star.

I'm told I am over-choosy, and I shocked everybody by doing Jeffrey Archer. I did that to annoy everybody; sometimes, between Medea and Virginia Woolf, you can get punch-drunk.

I love dresses that just skim the body, that suggest what's underneath rather than display it.