113 Quotes by Maggie Smith

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.

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’d done “Gosford Park,” a film that Julian Fellowes had written that Robert Altman directed.

It’s funny to be pigeonholed so late in life but there we are.

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.

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.

Sort of what you do in drama school when asked to play something way out of your reach. Anyway, we used to laugh a lot about that. I used to say I’m not going to act old, Penelope. I’ll just be myself.

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.

I’m hopeless – all I know is that time is going past so fast.