Top 35 Lesley Manville Quotes

I’m a big fan of Edouard Vuillard, so I’d like anything by him – particularly a painting called ‘Madame Hessel on the Sofa.’ His work is realistic without being literal: I can really imagine what Madame Hessel is thinking.

There isn’t a spare minute in the day. I have spent my life doing everything. I work. I go home. I do the shopping. I cook. Then there’s the laundry and the dog. Most of my life, I have been a working mother. And even when I wasn’t, I still did it all.

When I was eight, it was clear I was a very good singer.

I had left school at 16, gone to stage school – and, until I was 22, I hadn’t really played anyone but myself. Then in 1979, I made a film with Mike Leigh called ‘Grownups,’ which went out on the BBC, and overnight this new career opened up.

Hollywood… that’s not going to be my niche at all. If anyone is going wants to work with me, I would think it’s going to be independent films. I’m not 22!

It’s not just about young people – there are films being made that deal with women getting older. That’s a huge bonus, and here in America, that’s a huge step forward.

I hate that thing that if you are over 45, and you’re going to be on telly or make films, you have to do all this stupid stuff to your face. I would no more let someone stick a needle in my forehead than fly to the moon.

Corinne Bailey Rae I listen to a lot, and I’ll hear Desert Island Discs and quickly write down the name of a song, and it will open up a new area of music for me. I discovered an Argentinian guitarist, Jose Luis Bieito, on Classic FM.

The more you’ve lived, the more you’ve experienced, you emotionally know a lot more, especially if you haven’t had a regular, straightforward kind of life.

The more life you have, the more it’s in your pores, the more able you are to be creative as an artist.

I think that distributors and marketing companies realise that there are a huge number of women over 40 who want to go the cinema and see films about themselves. Women of my age don’t want to be force-fed with stuff about 25-year-olds.

I’m fascinated by food. Food is love, isn’t it?

For me, personality acting is not that interesting. I don’t want to just be myself.

One of the significant things that’s happened, which shouldn’t be looked at as lightly as it might sound, is that women over 45, over 50, are now allowed to be sexy.

Anyone who has to write an obituary for me one day will probably say, ‘She did absolute depths of agony really well.’ I’m not, however, an unhappy person.

I’m quite chameleon in my work – not normally looking much like I do in real life.

I, Lesley, I like looking nice. I like doing my hair and wearing makeup and wearing nice clothes. But I don’t care what my characters look like.

I have been devoted to my son, and there have been lots of jobs in the past that I haven’t done because I didn’t want to be away from him.

When I gave birth to my son, something happened. It is a huge thing for a woman: a whole set of emotions you never had before arrives, and a love you never had before in your life is now on tap.

I got invited to what’s called the Gifting Suite in Toronto. I had the day off, so I thought I’d go and see what’s what. You come out laden with wonderful stuff. Apparently, if you go to the Oscars, you get given things like iPads. Not that I’m in it for the swag.

I completely think of myself as sexual. Completely and utterly. Probably more so than I did when I was 30. I don’t know why. I’m very comfortable with how I look. I’m absolutely committed to never having anything done to my face. I would never let anyone near me with a Botox needle.

I like to personalise my dressing room, have a cover for the bed and, if it is a long run, a few cushions and a teapot – a little pot for one.

Oh, there’s so much ego with men; in their head, they can’t possibly think about Tesco’s when they are doing Othello. Er, why not? They want to think that they are such geniuses they can’t muddy their day with domesticity, and I’ve got no truck with it whatsoever.

I quite like that people tend not to know my name. I remember being at the Cannes film festival for ‘All or Nothing.’ I looked very different in the film – I had a little greasy bob and no makeup. I went to a dinner after the screening, and everyone completely ignored me. I got a real buzz out of that.

In my work, I want to convince people that I’m that character. If they know everything about Lesley Manville – private life, all of that stuff – it doesn’t help. So the kind of anonymity I enjoy is key.

With learning lines, before I had Alfie, I’d put it off and think, ‘Oh, I’ll just have a glass of wine and then do it later,’ but when you’ve finally got a child to bed and you know you’ve only got an hour, then you achieve so much.

A friend of mine rang the box office to collect a ticket I’d reserved for her, and the girl said, ‘Who’s Lesley Manville?’

I’ve got two older sisters who I’m very close to. And my son’s grown up with a big sense of family around him.

I do absolutely want to be around as long as possible. I tell my son: ‘You do realise, I am going to live to 100.’

A lot of the actors I knew threw in the towel when they became mothers. I couldn’t do that financially, and I didn’t want to – but I was knackered all the time.

I’ve reached a point in England where you can’t go much further; I would love to come to America and work with some of the interesting directors here.

I do get clocked in the street. People say, ‘You’re an actress, aren’t you?’ But they don’t know my name. Nine times out of 10, they don’t know what I’ve been in.

I had this exceptional classical music voice. If I’d followed a true path for my talent, I would have ended up being an opera singer.

When I make films, I work with Mike Leigh, who’s the most prolific director in England.

In 1990, I was in ‘The Three Sisters’ at the Royal Court and won the Clarence Derwent award for my supporting role as Natasha – the prize was £100. I could have paid the gas bill, but I ended up buying a porcelain and silver Bavarian coffee set in an antiques shop in Penzance.