Top 33 Anne Reid Quotes

My father fought in the war, and then he was posted all ’round the world with his job. So I didn’t know him very well when I was young.

My parents were adorable. They were very kind, and very broad-minded compared to people of their generation.

I never thought of getting married again. I’m quite difficult to live with, I think.

I think it’s such a clever idea, that you fall in love when you’re 16, and then you have this fantasy about that person for the rest of your life.

Inner talent gives you that ease. It’s not a remarkable thing – just a knack that gives you a very nice life.

Now that I know about my great-great-grandfather, I feel that John Reid and I would have got on well together.

Christmas Day itself hasn’t always been great. My parents went abroad when I was very young, and I went to boarding school. We had a few Christmases before that – I remember a big sack of presents and Mummy cooking goose.

I’m terribly happy at the moment – someone up there must be looking out for me.

I would have liked Sir Laurence Olivier to ask me to go to the Old Vic and let me play all the roles Judi Dench got.

I’m quite surprised I ever got married in the first place.

I now do my own cabaret act, singing and telling stories about my life.

Get an Alan Bennett script; then everybody will want to do it, no matter how big they are.

Your confidence is destroyed when you find out you can’t trust people.

I did a play in Bolton – ‘Billy Liar.’ I turned it down at first but then thought, ‘What the hell else can I do? I’m no good at anything else.’

I’ve accepted stuff even if it’s a few lines, because I think it’s better to be seen.

For the first part of my career, I did what I was told, and I wasn’t getting anywhere. I’d get in such a state when I was asked to do something, and it didn’t feel right, and I’d end up feeling that I wasn’t very good.

I used to lie in bed and imagine I was performing at the Albert Hall, not that I’d ever been there. I took lessons with a German teacher when I was quite young. But it turned out I had a very high soprano voice, which I didn’t like at all.

I tell myself things will be different in a few years’ time, but this is the most wonderful, golden time for me. I’m basking in the success of ‘Tango’, really loving it.

I like my own company.

You don’t feel old when you get old.

My teacher at RADA said I was going to have trouble when I left because I wasn’t an obvious juvenile lead, although I could do both comedy and drama. But I understood enough to know that my career was going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

I have notebooks all over the place. I write little stories for my cabaret.

‘Downton’ took a long time to catch fire in America, but we have been getting good reviews for ‘Tango.’

The day that changed my life was 3 July 1986, when I went to see American actress and singer Barbara Cook at London’s Donmar Warehouse.

You never know what life is going to throw at you, really, do you?

I’m past it now – love. I can’t imagine it happening again.

I should be in an old people’s home now, counting the roses in the wallpaper. It’s a good life, isn’t it?

I get very spiky if people treat me like an old lady.

I did go to public school, but that’s only because my parents were abroad. As a matter of fact, I think that’s helped my work. I can go from Victoria Wood’s ‘Dinnerladies’ to playing Barbara Cartland, from ‘Coronation Street’ to playing Celia in Last ‘Tango’.

I’m not really emotionally dependant on anybody except my son, my daughter-in-law, and my grandchildren. But a partner… I haven’t felt like that for so many years, I don’t really remember what it was like.

Jasmine – it brings back memories of India with my parents.

I think that the romantic suspense that you used to get between people like Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant is much sexier than seeing people taking their clothes off and getting into bed, which is voyeurism.

I’d make every weapon on the planet unusable. Every bomb. Every gun.