My strangest experience was my six words in 'Star Wars.' I've had more fanmail from that than anything I've ever done.
— Harriet Walter
Love is different at different stages of your life.
You need to distinguish between getting something off your chest that won't help anyone else or saying something because you know you will be hell to live with if you don't. Quite often, this will be beyond your control.
Acting is what I do with who I am.
Cleopatra was exhausting to play, but also completely exhilarating. She creates her own energy.
Romance is about investing in the future - with older people, there is less time for happy ever after.
Where does an actress go after playing Cleopatra's magnificent death? Why didn't Shakespeare write more - and more powerful - roles for mature women?
I've witnessed the survival of the theatre several times when it was meant to be dying.
I'm childish and silly. Most people tease me because I'm a bit daft.
I do think that there are certain parts, if you are lucky enough to play them, that are bigger than you, and they stretch you. I don't think you become a bigger person, but you develop certain muscles you didn't have before.
I'm not very good at going to sleep, and that's probably my worst problem. I don't need much more than seven and a half hours, but I probably get six. I take all my problems to bed with me and fret. I can't switch off.
I was not emotionally mature enough to accept any kind of success when I was young. I needed to go that long route.
My centre of who I thought I was was never very consciously about being beautiful or attractive - I think I'm one of those people who's actually grown into their looks.
I've one of those brains that doesn't quieten down.
Caring less about what people think is a big thing for me.
I've found a much better love life in older age.
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.
The language is always powerful in Shakespeare, but with 'Antony and Cleopatra,' the speeches are so big and muscular and rich - exhausting to speak, actually.
I yearn to make a really good, intelligent movie before I die: I don't completely rule out the possibility, but in Hollywood, I'm not bankable.
Male playwrights, on the whole, are probably more interested in male characters. They need women characters to be the women in their lives or to be the domestic difficulty.
Luckily, each generation brings forth great writers, actors, directors, and designers.
As I have got older, I have become easier on myself. It's about realising things can't be perfect.
As long as I am still interested and curious, I enjoy getting up in the morning, but I can't say I have a happy smile on my face 24/7.
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 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 came up almost completely through the subsidised theatre. I have never been absolutely at the market interface, where I've got to sell my wares or die - I've always been protected from that.
When I was really young, I wanted to be a fishmonger's wife.
I'm an oversharer but selective about who I share with.
I think I have a deep-seated fear of being misunderstood. Or being misjudged.
I've done a lot of Shakespeare over the years. You start to realise how the plays fit together; he's always using pieces from one and slotting them into others.
I decided I was going to play Cleopatra as someone with a brain. She's kept Egypt, this tiny country, in a balance of power with the almighty Roman empire, and she's done it through force of personality.
I've been taking lessons in Damehood from Judi Dench. Being a Dame is useful in restaurants, hotels, and restaurants, Judi says, but you have to get someone else to do the booking.
I vote, but I don't feel that I'm achieving much when I do.
Work has been the central column for most of my life; it has always been my identity.
I'm very aware that after you've played Cleopatra, there's not a lot that can top that in this sphere, so it means that I want to almost change the sphere I work in rather completely because I will always be comparing it to Cleopatra.
I read, I gossip, I do crosswords. I think chatting with friends is relaxing. I've picked them up all through my life - if you live long enough, you end up with quite a large circle.
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.'
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.
