39 Quotes by Harriet Walter

I've been blessed with pretty strong stamina and healthy genes, so I'd call myself sensible. I've had regular mammograms ever since I found a lump in my breast when I was 30. Thankfully, all was well.

I was not emotionally mature enough to accept any kind of success when I was young. I needed to go that long route.

Some people are instantly brilliant. The Kenneth Branaghs of this world are ready-formed actors at 23 - he has used his success in lots of different ways - but there are people out there for whom acting is: 'Ooh, I can get on the telly and be famous.'

As I have got older, I have become easier on myself. It's about realising things can't be perfect.

I just like watching people who really are not self-conscious, who aren't aware, because I fear that one could become too self-conscious, too artful, as an actor. Sometimes if you look at somebody, you can extrapolate from their exterior what might be happening in their interior. I'm nosy.

I lived with my mother all my life until she died, and I don't really think I knew her, because I was always using her as my mother, if you know what I mean.

I think I have a deep-seated fear of being misunderstood. Or being misjudged.

My strangest experience was my six words in 'Star Wars.' I've had more fanmail from that than anything I've ever done.

I'm no longer the young woman I was playing before, and I'm in a profession where that continuum that is me is irrelevant to most people - they're meeting me for the first time, seeing me for the first time, and they're seeing an old woman, so that's what I've got to start being.