Top 76 Quotes & Sayings by Maggie Smith
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British actress Maggie Smith.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
I longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect.
I have many good friends, but I tend to keep to myself anyway. It's odd, doing things and having no one to share them with.
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.
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.
The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them.
Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary.
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.
Listen, I must be 110 by now. Granny is going to kick the bucket at some point.
I like being outside and working with the elements. The elemental aspects of it. The physicality of it.
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.
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 know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad.
My career is chequered. Then I think I got pigeon-holed in humour; Shakespeare is not my thing.
I think lots of actors are very nervous and shy. I know lots of them who are, and some who aren't of course.
I fear that I won't work in the theatre again. I'm sad about that. But I won't retire.
The performances you have in your head are always much better than the performances on stage.
People say it gets better but it doesn't. It just gets different, that's all.
When you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything.
I've been playing old parts forever. I play 93 quite often. When you've done it more than once, you take the hint. I think it's a great burden if you're one of those fantastic stars who've always been beautiful; then I think it's hard.
I know there is something out there, and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. But I'm not like Shirley MacLaine, who probably believes we were past lovers in another life.
Chris and Toby are far too sane to be upset any more.
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 wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen.
I don't think films about elderly people have been made very much.
There's this wonderful first assistant and he'll be saying, 'Now Harry goes down among the dragons.' You have to hold yourself together. Because if you lose it for a second then you're sunk.
I like the ephemeral thing about theatre, every performance is like a ghost - it's there and then it's gone.
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?
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.
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.
If you're lucky, I think you know what you want to do with your life. I think that's a greater gift that any of the gifts you might have when you do know, if you know what I mean. It must be awful to not know what to do.
Some people say you have to fight cancer. But it was fighting me. The cure was worse than the disease, and it left me totally exhausted and depressed. I just hid myself away in my daughter-in-law's flat.
Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.
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.
I believe that I am past my prime. I had reckoned on my prime lasting till I was at least fifty.
I do love comedy, and when it's a comedy moment and you can make people laugh, of course it is wonderful.
When I started acting almost 50 years ago, it wasn't about fame. It was about acting.
There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.
I loved Robert Altman, so gentle yet naughty! And Julian Fellowes writes so beautifully.
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 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.
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.
I'm so moved to hear Celia Johnson again, so lovely.
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.
It was - it's always very nice to be somebody rather grand.
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.
It's easy to get bogged down in bad news.
I feel now like a hinge between generations, which is strange. It just happened recently. I think it's because my daughter is so much like me at her age. I feel like I'm reliving my own mother's experience of raising me.
It's funny to be pigeonholed so late in life but there we are.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm hopeless - all I know is that time is going past so fast.
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 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.
We can't escape the shadow, so the best thing we can do is notice the light and be open to it.
Try not to cry too much because it can be pretty heart-breaking and pretty hard.
One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act, and one's still acting.
Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class.
Theres a difference between solitude and loneliness
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