Maggie Smith Quotes

People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.

I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.

I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.

When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.

Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.

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.

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.

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.

Little girls, I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all my pupils are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

I am just surprised to be doing anything at my age actually. When you think of where I am now and where I've come from, I am very pleased and very grateful to be standing up and delivering Julian's great lines.

One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one's still acting.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class.

Theres a difference between solitude and loneliness

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.

Try not to cry too much because it can be pretty heart-breaking and pretty hard.

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.

We can't escape the shadow, so the best thing we can do is notice the light and be open to it.

I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad.

Alan Rickman was such a terrific actor, and that was such a terrific character that he played. And it was a joy to be with him. We used to laugh together because we ran out of reaction shots. They were always - when everything had been done and the children were finished, they would turn the camera around and we'd have to do various reaction shots of amazement or sadness and things. We used to say we'd got to about number 200-and-something and we'd run out of knowing what to do when the camera came around on us. But he was a joy.

There were male colleges, and there were very few female colleges.

I'm far, far, far from that. But of course, that's one of the joys of acting is that you can move up in the world, even if - you know, in the characters that you're playing, even if you don't.

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.

Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more.

I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much.

The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.

I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.

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.

My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.

I had no idea that that was around in the family anywhere. Maybe it never was. But - so they broke the way for me, if you know what I mean. I have no idea where I got the idea from to do what I do. But I think they - Ian and Alistair, my brothers kind of opened a lot of doors for me onto the world - you know, made it seem to be a very, very interesting place.

It's easy to get bogged down in bad news.

I'd done "Gosford Park," a film that Julian Fellowes had written that Robert Altman directed.

Where you get people who want to take a picture of you or take a picture of them with you.

There was nobody in the family who had ever done anything like that before. My brothers - I had two brothers. They were twins. They both became architects. They were both six years older.

I'm just glad to get any role... the fact that they're all 90 is neither here nor there! Actually, it was Hook that started it. I think it was Peggy Ashcroft who couldn't do the part and somebody was asked how old was I and would I be able to do the part, and the person replied "92" very quickly. And so I've been stuck ever since! But I'm actually very grateful.

I think everybody who was in it thought they were all going to be Eartha Kitt or be big stars. That didn't happen, but it was a wake-up call to have one's first professional job on Broadway, I must say.

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.

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.

I think he [Leonardo DiCaprio] is a terrific actor. And I've - I've been rooting and voting for him since "Gilbert Grape." I thought he was so amazing in that one. He was a young man, really very young boy.

It was - it's always very nice to be somebody rather grand.

I find it very difficult to do anything on my own now because people recognize me. This has never happened to me before because I haven't really done television before. But I suppose if you're in people's rooms all the time, I don't know - I was thinking the other night with people like DiCaprio and, you know, those big stars and Cate Blanchett, and you just think how did they exist? It's so difficult. And I think now it's very intrusive because of these cellphones, you know, with cameras.

Which is strange - I've always thought of myself as someone who writes out of difficulty. And I did do that, but I came out on the side of light more often than not.

I'm hopeless - all I know is that time is going past so fast.

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

There are responsibilities which are parental responsibilities and those are the types of things we prepare the next generation for, but no one tells you how to answer the kids' questions in the backseat of the car when they want to know what the world is for or where they came from or why any of this is happening.

I'm so moved to hear Celia Johnson again, so lovely.

I just did adore Daniel - Daniel Radcliffe, who I had worked with before "Harry Potter" and spent a long time telling all the producers they had to see him because I thought he was so terrific. And it's been sad thinking about it because of Alan Rickman.