Tamsin Greig Quotations

I am interested in shows that are not out-and-out gag fests: you see the truth of a broken heart behind them. That is what life is like: it's really funny, you see funny things as soon as you step out of the room, but underneath that is a whole bag of broken hearts. It's that real pain and that real hilarity that makes life so intriguing.

If you stop being scared, that's when entropy sets in, and you may as well go home.

A lot of middle-aged women are children still trying to find their way.

Families always stay the same, but they always provide more stories.

Families are families. We've all got them, more or less, and we all know what it's like to be bullied by another generation.

I always said there's no way I'd work in America because I'm too weird and I'm too old, but somehow it's happened.

I am not stupid - I'm not young, and I'm not beautiful.

I can do a little bit of comedy. I can be in an in-between place, where I can do a little bit.

I don't ever want to do stuff just for the sake of it.

I feel like a 16-year-old trapped inside a dead woman's body.

I suppose I flee to life. I'm most interested when conversations become difficult.

I think comedy is the perfect vehicle for that which is slightly beyond life.

I think comedy stems from being honest, often painfully so. I hope I can achieve that perspective in my own life and also have fun.

I think that if you take somebody out of their comfort zone, they're going to dislike people because they're not liking themselves in a situation.

I try not to look any further ahead than the next cup of tea. You never know if that cuppa will come or not, do you?

I work in Britain, where women are allowed to look their age.

I'm an actor, and I'm supposed to reflect real people.

I've been acting since I could function. I got into acting to get attention as a child.

I've long thought that for my last meal on earth I will be perfectly happy with a granary loaf toastie with melted crunchy peanut butter and banana.

If a job fell from Heaven that was in America, I'd have a go, but I don't feel compelled to go and hunt it down.

In theatre, there's no time for a proper meal.

Kids have a great sense of humour. If you don't, you're going to miss out.

Laughing and crying are very similar. They're an extreme response to life. You see it in children who start laughing hysterically.

When we were growing up, women in their late 40s generally didn't dye their hair.

Writers have to be very careful and discerning because so much of the machine is out of their control.

When I was 17, a neighbour I knew well died of cancer, and I became au pair to her three little girls. In circumstances like that, when you can't really help, I think it's a human response to do something beyond oneself. So I did a sponsored parachute jump for Cancer Research. It was exciting and ridiculous.

Maybe this whole obsession about colouring our hair is about our inability to grow up. To let go of the fact we aren't children any more, and the whole thing about changing our faces and looking young, and 60 being the new 40, is maybe we don't want to let go of our childhood.

I have a shallow understanding of what it means to be alive, and I know certain things about parenting and being a wife and doing the school run. I know little bits, but I'm really a paddler on a beach.

Going to rehearsals of school plays got me out of science. It became clear what inspired me and what dampened my spirit. The only other thing I could do at school was trampolining - it didn't seem to have much future in it.

I was a cleaner while at university. The job wasn't bad, but I was amazed by how badly cleaners are treated - how disrespected they are by the people they work for.

I think if you're trying to be funny, sometimes you're bending a piece of metal in a direction it doesn't want to go. And sometimes comedy just needs to find itself.

I think going from doing TV and straight plays to Shakespeare is weird enough because you have this heightened language, and you are telling a story through metric poetry. But I think music is that place beyond poetry.

When I was growing up, I was obsessed with 'Cagney and Lacey.'

We live in a fast-paced culture where we're asked to make snap decisions all day long, so I suppose cash-point donations feed into the immediacy of our life experience. So it's a great idea. But I think it needs careful handling.

There's something in us that lives just beyond our normality - and I think we've all got a song in us. If only we could master that tiny muscle and make it sound listenable.

I've been so amazed at the number of really professional top-of-their-game women who I know to be intelligent, well educated and brilliant who have said, 'What was it like to snog Matt LeBlanc?'

Scientifically speaking, if I say something, or it gets misquoted, or people put a spin on it... I mean, are you interested, really, in what people are saying?

Radio listeners often have a very fertile imagination when it comes to body shape.

You step over the threshold of your parents' home, and you're instantly transported back to your childhood. It's like time travel. You revert at once to a place of arrested development.

I tried to get into the National Youth Theatre and didn't, and I tried to get into drama school and didn't, and then I went to university and was really delighted that I went there. I think having the word 'no' can be quite creative.

Dad was a retired chemist who, in his 60s, fathered and fed me and my two sisters while Mum worked as a secretary. He made us curries, Chinese meals and strange concoctions. He was often unsuccessful.

I knew a homeless guy who'd give all the copper coins that people gave him to charity. So I think there's something that makes us want to give. For me, it's quite a selfish luxury: you feel enlivened, deepened and self-nurtured by generosity.

I know women at work who don't talk about having a baby because they don't want to upset the apple cart, but unless people know what the problems are, why should they engage with it?

I'm quite an odd little part of the Venn diagram. I'm not a movie star and beautiful in that way. I do an odd thing that's funny and sad, and my face and my old body can take that.

I'll read a recipe but then decide, 'Well, it's sort of like this, then.' Or I'll go to the fridge and think, 'I'll see what I can put together,' and I'll combine beetroot and sausage and prawns with goat's cheese sprinkled on top and think, 'I like that they're all slightly pink. It looks fine and... actually, it is fine.'

I know I don't fit in in L.A. because I look my age.

I did a drama degree, went to secretarial college, then got a job with a theatre company in Birmingham. It's been a slow burn, which doesn't seem to have gone out.

I cannot step into any day without help. I have a fantastically engaged husband who is very present for his children and our family life. We've got a brilliant nanny, other help from parents-in-law, godparents, friends. Also, I've had incredible women around me in the business.

It's interesting to see the dislocation between how people perceive a person visually. Apparently on the radio I'm blonde with a big arse.

Every drama school in the country turned me down, and so I was lucky to study drama at all, even if it was lowly Birmingham University. But even when I came out with my degree, my mother promptly insisted I go straight to secretarial college to have something to fall back on, just in case - which didn't exactly fill me with confidence.

Oh, nobody would ever want to know me in Hollywood. I'm far too puffin-faced for that, too weird-looking. No, I think I'll probably stick to telly, if telly'll have me, though I wouldn't mind doing radio plays as well.

When I came to faith, I thought I would have to stop being an actor, because it's all about artifice and manipulation. But we're living in a world where God doesn't really have an influence, unless it's fundamentalists, so I'll always be an outsider because of my faith. And when you think about it, faith and acting are all about stories, so the two are not mutually exclusive.

It suddenly hit me one day: after we're married I'll be called Mrs T Leaf!

On my mother's side I'm Polish-Jewish, and on my father's side I'm Scottish puffin.

I did used to like trampolining, but I’m probably past it, I think. You need to have a really strong pelvic floor to be good at trampolining, and I’ve had three children.

There aren't many laughs in that and I remember doing a look and everybody laughed and I just thought, wow, that's incredible how you can do that. So I did another look and they laughed again and then I remember thinking, hold on, this isn't right for this piece, you've got to stop it.