Top 56 Quotes & Sayings by Jennifer Saunders

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British comedian Jennifer Saunders.
Last updated on November 8, 2024.
Jennifer Saunders

Jennifer Jane Saunders is an English actress, comedian, screenwriter, and singer. Saunders originally found attention in the 1980s, when she became a member of The Comic Strip after graduating from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama with her best friend and comedy partner, Dawn French. With French, she co-wrote and starred in their eponymous sketch show, French and Saunders, for which they jointly received a BAFTA Fellowship in 2009. Saunders later received acclaim in the 1990s for writing and playing her character Edina Monsoon in her sitcom Absolutely Fabulous.

I haven't got time in my life to do all the things I should be doing, like running and dieting and decorating my house, buying some furniture.
I think it is a bit harder for women starting in comedy.
'The Rocky Horror Show' was actually my first musical love. — © Jennifer Saunders
'The Rocky Horror Show' was actually my first musical love.
I write for women because it's the only way I can use what I've experienced. It's good that people like what I write, but I don't want to go down the feminist path.
When I was a child, a lot of my time was spent in Scotland because my mother's Scottish, and we used to go up to Ayrshire and visit relations in a place called Dalry.
I used to take someone with me for the chemotherapy so I could do jokes. You always try and find something absurd.
Well, I'm lucky because, you see, I'll probably bounce back from this role.
Porsches are a great drive.
I did grieve a bit when I wasn't having the chemo anymore. I was used to sitting in the little chair and then the nurse would come and do it. It was like that was your job for that long and it was reassuring.
Lacroix has been fantastic. He's very nice. He gets the joke, and I think that's a good thing.
I remember when the first police scary video thing came out, and you thought, wow, ooh, look at this, come and look, come and look. And now it's on every channel.
My job gives me the attention I'd otherwise crave.
We were watching the first series recently, and it has a charm, a kind of amateur charm. At that point we didn't involve ourselves technically at all - we just messed about and told our jokes - and it looks a bit like that.
I love the TV show, and if you make a bad movie it means you've soiled it. Just like if we made an advert. We were offered so many times and I'd say, look, this is the good thing, and you can't compromise that, because then you compromise the integrity of the characters.
Me just being myself in public or on TV is the biggest nightmare in the world. — © Jennifer Saunders
Me just being myself in public or on TV is the biggest nightmare in the world.
Like all girls, when I was growing up, I always worried about this bit of me being too fat or that bit. But I look back at pictures of me when I was young, and I was thin and gorgeous.
But I think our humour is exactly the same today. Only, we've made rules now. We've said we are not going to do prosthetic make-up scenes, because when they take it off half your face comes off.
I'm a really good driver. I've been driving since I was very small, and I do like driving fast. I remember the first time my dad taught me that when you go into a corner you change down then put your foot right down on the way out. I'm very competitive about driving.
Men would find it much harder because men have such odd personal relationships with each other. They don't really emotionally connect, whereas women do. I think women become very close.
I recommend a little dose of cancer to anyone.
I'm my own worst critic. I could tell the critics a thing or two about my shows.
I've never had Botox. But I like people to imagine I have.
You get crushes on people. You have to see them every day in that week. They're a fantastic person, and it could be a man or a woman.
The way certain men treat women is influenced by the Internet a lot.
I can remember the first face-lift show that came on. I rang up everyone - are you watching? I'm watching.
The reason they keep it so tight is that no one liked them, so that without each other, actually, they couldn't exist. They support each other. They support their flaws and everything else.
They have become part of us in that if we get dressed up as them, we don't actually have to have a script. You can just become them. You just become nervy.
My daughters related to something in the Spice Girls that made them feel better about being female. They truly started to believe girls could do anything. They could be fat, thin, anything they wanted to be.
I'd much rather have sat there and just been a fly on the wall, instead of having to smile at people. I'd rather have been a waitress. Just gone round and stared at people.
The truth is, you can be honest with your friends - but you just can't be honest with the general public if you want to keep your friends.
At home, I relax by gardening, or just pottering.
I always swore I would never write a book. But I read Clare Balding's and it was really interesting and so prettily written and lovely and not too revealing. I went to her book launch and met her editor who said 'why don't you think about it? You can do it however you want, based on your characters or you.'
There were a lot of areas we didn't cover that I'm hoping to cover if we do some specials. One is to see more of Patsy's home and her home life, which is just the saddest thing.
We had this party in New York, and there were a lot of gay men there dressed up as the characters. I showed up just looking like myself, but it was a real case of shame. They looked so fantastic. We could never quite live up to it.
I absolutely love Scotland. I'm always happy there.
I came to the Kardashians a bit late, and I'm still just gob-smacked. Who are these people? — © Jennifer Saunders
I came to the Kardashians a bit late, and I'm still just gob-smacked. Who are these people?
I think when Madonna did sexy stuff, she looked more in control. And I think it looked more like she was breaking boundaries. Today, it feels like it's pandering to everything that's wrong, and I don't think it's nice, especially for young girls.
I think people imagine that your fame somehow sort of equates with how much you get paid.
Well, I would definitely give up performing... But I would still sit down in an office and pretend to write with Dawn, even if we never produced anything, because it's just hilarious. I would miss that.
I'm a walkawayer. If someone brings me a really crap meal in a restaurant I will tell them it's wonderful and then just never go to the restaurant again. I think that's the best way to do it generally, rather than sit and fight and annoy your head. Just pretend to enjoy it and then leave.
Commissioners are obsessed with young people, which is funny because they don't watch telly - only old people do.
When you are doing chemo, you have a load of time.
I cannot do confrontation. You know that fight or flight thing? I'm flight. I just don't want the argument.
I did want a boy child because I had this romantic idea that a boy child when he's 16 takes his mother out for dinner.
No, sometimes we just have to take liberties because the idea was so good. I wish we'd just gone with the idea that Patsy had been a man. It would have been fantastic.
I'm a total petrolhead. My three brothers and I used to ride scrambling bikes in the field near where we lived. We all liked cars. I've always loved the smell of an engine.
I think the idea of losing your hair is still very potent, emotional thing.
I grew up with a mother who, every time she saw something, would say, I'm going to look that up. And I've become that person - I've become the reference-book person. — © Jennifer Saunders
I grew up with a mother who, every time she saw something, would say, I'm going to look that up. And I've become that person - I've become the reference-book person.
It makes me a bit sad that, if anything, that people seem to want to go back to an old model of normality, and sitcoms seem to want to be about ordinary families and things that aren't very interesting. I just think it's a bit sad. It's a shame that life is still depicted in a very straight way.
The biggest thing is online shopping. So that you don't have to dress up, go down Bond Street or Rodeo or wherever, go and be intimidated by shop assistants to buy Gucci shoes or a Prada dress. You can just go online and, if it doesn't fit you, send it back. And I think that is the biggest, biggest difference, because that means everybody can do it.
The weird thing about all the drag queen Patsys and Eddies from "Absolutely Fabulous" is they are so beautiful, and so tall, and so slim that it sort of puts us to shame.
People ask could I have written the show I wrote in 1990 now, and I don't think I could. I think it's much easier to offend people nowadays. People have grown quite sensitive, I think.
I think people love to be noticed, they love to feel included. A lot of people are flattered if you, you know, if you make jokes about them, or I think because it means they're known.
In the "Absolutely Fabulous" show, it's a fairly dysfunctional family, but they're not women who are constantly in search of a man. They don't live conventionally, they don't live in a conventional heterosexual relationship. Edina wishes all her children were gay, because as far as she's concerned it's the most glamorous most interesting thing to be. I think it's about bucking convention, really, and living life without apologizing.
I think TV companies don't take as many risks any more, it's a bit more prescriptive. There are more channels but there seems to be actually less main network channel comedy. You can't offend people as easily, people take things very seriously now. I think that's down to social media though because people can have little tribes of offence.
Instant coffee is just old beans that have been cremated.
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