Top 33 Lesley Nicol Quotes

When you look back, I think things are as they are meant to be. Timing is very important.

I never imagined I’d go into acting, but I always loved drama, and when I was 16, I discovered the Library Theatre up the road. So I plucked up courage and asked if I could watch rehearsals. It was like Heaven.

For many years, I picked the wrong men, or they picked me. I think if you don’t feel attractive or worth something as a woman, you attract men who don’t really look after you. That’s what happened to me, but I realise that those relationships were like a journey, helping me to learn something about myself.

The first meal my husband ever made me was a chicken curry. I have never tasted anything so delicious in my life.

I can do basics, but I’m not a proper cook. I can do a roast. I can stick a chicken in the oven with vegetables.

I inherited my weight problem from my mum. She was always on diets. If there was a box of chocolates in the house, she’d eat half a chocolate, then put the other half back. She loved me, but she did encourage me to diet in my teens.

My husband is a martial artist, and he thinks it’s hilarious that I have a stage-fighting-proficiency certificate. He thinks that’s ridiculous. Can’t say I’ve used it much.

I’m very lucky to have a husband who cooks, for a start. It’s a good partnership. I met him through a friend, and we just hit it off.

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I’d got ‘Downton Abbey’ when I was 22.

The first time I ever got up on a stage, I did a comedy poem. I don’t know how I got there in the first place because I was very, very shy.

As an actor, you never know where the work’s going to come, so you have to be flexible about it.

I quite like L.A.

I don’t have any rules when it comes to clothes. I’ll wear anything if it fits and looks good.

I don’t do freeways.

I mean, I’ve done musicals, but it’s not my best thing.

I want to have a scene with Maggie Smith.

I’ve not cooked Christmas dinner since 1982.

I met Bette Midler, who I absolutely love.

Visiting a show that’s already established can be a bit daunting, as they’ve been a family already, and you’re the newbie.

One of the Sunday newspapers asked me to make my favorite dish, and they photographed me holding it in the kitchen. It was roasted salmon with roasted vegetables. That’s not cooking; that’s putting things in a pan. It looked quite nice, but I’m not saying it was good.

I wish I could play the piano. I started when I was four and finished when I was five. I got bored. I couldn’t tell my left hand from my right back then!

I go dog-walking a lot.

I’ve been to the White House and had Hilary Clinton push through the crowd to come and meet me. Chelsea Clinton, too.

I guess that is my favorite thing – to make people laugh and also to maybe engage them emotionally and touch them somehow in telling the story.

People are always asking me for my favorite recipe, and I have to say, ‘I don’t really have one.’

People have preconceptions about women of a certain age.

When I heard I had gotten ‘Downton Abbey,’ I remember I was standing on a freezing cold street in Manchester where we were shooting the Manchester part of ‘West is West.’

Since I’ve turned 50, I’ve had the best roles of my life, and I’ve got married. Everyone said that wasn’t possible because there are no men, but I’ve done it. I think it’s just going to get better.

I believe anything can happen.

The first role I played was Madame Ranevsky in ‘The Cherry Orchard.’

I’m an ambassador for Medical Detection dogs.

‘Sweeney Todd’ is my favorite Sondheim musical.

People I’ve never spoken to before come up to me and give me a hug.