Maggie Smith Quotations

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

When I started acting almost 50 years ago, it wasn't about fame. It was about 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.

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

I wanted to be a serious actress, but of course that didn't really happen.

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.

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?

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

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.

The thing is, often press people ask questions that are so personal that even your nearest and dearest wouldn't ask them.

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

I do love comedy, and when it's a comedy moment and you can make people laugh, of course it is wonderful.

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

I loved Robert Altman, so gentle yet naughty! And Julian Fellowes writes so beautifully.

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

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.

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 longed to be bright and most certainly never was. I was rather hopeless, I suspect.

Old people are scary. And I have to face it. I am old and I am scary.

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

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

I think lots of actors are very nervous and shy. I know lots of them who are, and some who aren't of course.

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.

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 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.

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.

I fear that I won't work in the theatre again. I'm sad about that. But I won't retire.

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.

She was able to maintain her legs, and she shot the ball (well) the entire game.

I remember when he was diagnosed as hyper-manic asking what it meant and the doctor saying violent moods swings and indiscriminate sexual activity. And I thought 'that about covers it really'.

We walked in last September and told her we had been beige people, but we wanted to rejuvenate our house.

The store is Kathryn. Bright, fun and beautiful.

Defensively, we stepped it up. Our post players were aggressive, and it led to a lot of points in transition.

Athletically, they had a slight edge on us. We did what we could to put ourselves in a position to win.

It's a constant battle. We're constantly fighting it from both ends.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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'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.

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

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

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

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

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.

It made it feel impossible, quite honestly, because filming - you film come rain, come shine, come whatever. And it did rain a lot. And of course, that's what she must have gone through. Of course it rained; of course it was cold,you know, it really was quite hard to be out there in the rain.

I think there's always great tension because there never seems to be enough - there is always pressure. There's always pressure because there isn't enough time. There's never enough time for a movie, it seems to me. Never.

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 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 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 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.

Theres a difference between solitude and loneliness

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.

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

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

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.

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