Top 33 Prunella Scales Quotes

I’d love to play Constance in ‘King John’ or Paulina in ‘The Winter’s Tale.’ I’d like to go on working till I drop.

My very first school was a primary school in Surrey. I remember being taught to read by the traditional ABC, instead of look-say – that is, whole words at a time – which was fashionable when my children were at school.

Being out of work is very depressing. But luckily I haven’t been there for a long time.

I just think it’s useful for people to know that even if you are off the telly you’re just an ordinary person who uses the Tube.

I have worked for Tesco and am grateful to them but in principle I believe in individual shops.

I stayed a year in the sixth form and there was talk of Cambridge, but I wanted to go to drama school. At 17 and three months I went to the Old Vic School in London. This most remarkable and brilliant drama school lasted only six years because the Old Vic Theatre hadn’t the money to go on funding it.

When I had started commuting into London for theatre school, I’d had to sell my uncle’s stamp collection for £300.

I grew up in a household that was very friendly towards the theatre and acting.

Actors go into it because it gives us the chance to play people a great deal more interesting than we are, and to say things infinitely wittier and more intelligent than anything we could think of.

It breaks my heart to hear of our theatres struggling to survive. As well as playing a vital role in community life, they’re guardians of our heritage and should be cherished.

I’m not a very assertive person.

It isn’t often I get a part that enables me to play someone from the age of 13 up to 81.

My mother and father were lovely parents, always quite hard up, but very hard-working.

In my extreme youth I did a terrifying diet – drinking 40 cups of liquid a day.

I love live theatre, it’s always thrilling and exciting.

My mother was originally from Yorkshire and I spent a lot of my childhood there.

Gertrude’s Secret’ is highly entertaining. Some of the monologues are very funny, some very surprising and some painful.

I think local shopping areas and markets are terribly important, both for tradespeople and the local feeling of an area.

John Cleese is a very fast worker and a highly disciplined one.

Dad was the generation that fought in both world wars, and people married rather later when they had been in the trenches. My mum was an actress and he saw her in a show in London and they married. She stopped acting when she had babies, which is a shame.

I’m of a generation that doesn’t expect automatic happiness, so I feel incredibly lucky.

I think protecting rural England is more important than any work I do as an actress.

Sometimes with good writers you don’t spot the theme, but when you come away you realise there has been one.

I can’t bear the idea or concept of being a ‘celeb.’

It’s strange how ‘Fawlty’ has become a perennial. I keep meeting new generations of schoolboys who know the lines better than I did when I said them. The program has sensational sales in video. I’m mercifully on a small percentage.

I love long runs. I never feel ready to go till about the second Wednesday matinee.

In 1940 my mum took a job as under-matron at her old school, which had been evacuated from Eastbourne to Windermere; I got a bursary and spent eight years as a boarder. It was a smashing education; I regret being at a single-sex school, but I had a brother, so knew what guys were.

I don’t like being recognised. Shopping, I often wear glasses and a scarf.

What is it about royalty – even if you’re a confirmed republican – that is dramatically interesting?

Supermarkets must not eliminate the individual retailers and market roads like the Northcote.

The charming sitcom is all very well, but good comedy is based on pain and danger and fear.

When you watch some old sitcoms, however charming they are, they have often lost speed over the years. The speed of ‘Fawlty Towers’ has lasted the distance.

I got a job right out of drama school as assistant stage manager at the Bristol Old Vic. I’ve been lucky enough to stay in work ever since.