Top 50 Joanna Lumley Quotes

Oh, I’m not beautiful. I can look beautiful; I can put beauty on. When I’m tired, I look bloody awful. I think I’m turning into the actress from ‘Dynasty,’ Linda Evans.

I have a toy giraffe on my bed. I’ve got photographs over my desk as well as a mask of a giraffe in my kitchen. I am totally hooked.

I can’t see any difference in having your hair dyed, your teeth fixed, your nose done, or your face smoothed out or lifted.

NASA space scientists have been studying giraffe skin so they can apply what they learn from it to the construction of spacesuits.

I could never go into politics, because I’m far too impatient and I’d want to be a dictator, albeit a benevolent one… I would hope.

I always knew that good stuff would come along when I was older. So when I was 18, I longed to be 30; when I was 30, I longed to be 50. I’ve always looked forward to my next birthday.

You have to feel more involved than just writing out a cheque. Charity is almost the wrong word – I think people are beginning to feel more responsible for the world.

I hate the hand that comes out of a car and just drops litter in the street. I hate that! For some reason, it just fills me with fury! It’s just utter laziness, lack of interest in other people, lack of interest in the planet, in the hedgehog who might eat the plastic bag, it’s a lack of concern.

If you’re an enthusiast and you love the world like I do, it comes naturally. But I think charity must become more fun to give, more interactive and imaginative.

I’m aware of my body.

We transported eight giraffes, and there are now nine because one gave birth to a male shortly afterwards. They carry their pregnancies very well-they all looked the same.

Cameras love pretty girls and craggy, old character men more than they can take craggy, old character women. But that’s what’s always happened. Work out how you can fit into it, and make that work. There are never going to be millions of parts for older actresses because there never were.

I was once kissed on the lips by a giraffe, and I don’t think I’ve ever got over it.

I don’t think men are that attracted by glamour. I think women are attracted by glamour. I think men are attracted by a sense of friendship.

I have never felt the constraints of social acceptability.

You have to feel more involved than just writing out a cheque. Charity is almost the wrong word – I think people are beginning to feel more responsible for the world.

I think I’m a spiritual person. I don’t really go to church often when services are on, but I like going in when they are empty and quiet, and just sitting there and thinking for a little while.

I’ve never felt the constraints of social acceptability.

You only have one go at life, which is thrilling. Only you can make yourself into who you want to be. Don’t blame anybody else. You are entitled to free fresh air, and that’s it. Do the rest yourself.

I haven’t got a very sweet tooth, but I love salted things like nuts. I would have to be dragged in by a lorry if I ate as many salted peanuts as I would like to.

I was 21 and had been going out with my boyfriend for two years when I found out I was pregnant – despite being told by doctors that I was sterile. Jamie’s father and I hadn’t discussed marriage, and to me, it wasn’t something to be entered into just to stop gossip.

In Ethiopia… you might find a seven-year-old expected to take 15 goats out into the fields for the whole day with only a chapati to eat and his whistle. Why are we so afraid to give our children responsibilities like this?

I’d describe myself as a saver, but just sometimes I can spend like a kicking horse! Ryman is the one shop I can’t go past without going into. I just can’t resist lovely stationery.

You see, there weren’t these magazines like ‘Heat’ in my day. Always waiting to trip up these pretty girls and make them seem something horrible, something to make them look stupid and small and ugly and disgusting.

Giraffes are completely tranquil – they have no predators as adults because there’s not an animal in the jungle stupid enough to go for them.

I’ve had my run-ins with department stores, like Harrods, which stopped selling fur coats, but I found some there with fur trim, which is just as disgusting. Foie gras production is appalling – there’s no excuse for selling it.

I would do anything to keep looking the job. I think you make an extra effort if you’re on show.

I used to go out wearing any old rubbish, no make-up, nothing, but since mobile phones, that has all had to stop. People do come up to you so often and say hello, or want a photograph, and I just can’t do it anymore in what I used to wear. They don’t want to be seen hanging off a rabid old granny any more than I do.

Nobody tells you Rwanda looks like Tuscany with its tiled roofs.

I used to go out wearing any old rubbish, no make-up, nothing, but since mobile phones, that has all had to stop. People do come up to you so often and say hello, or want a photograph, and I just can’t do it anymore in what I used to wear. They don’t want to be seen hanging off a rabid old granny any more than I do.

I never mind scrubbing floors, vacuuming or bending and carrying stuff. Each time I do it I think, this is instead of going to the gym.

Even clingfilm – if it’s gone over a salad bowl, take it off, use it again. I wash out carrier bags; I save brown paper from parcels. I save string; I save ribbons. I separate all my bits and pieces.

My great-great-great uncle – or maybe it’s only two ‘greats’ – crossbred the first Aberdeen Angus.

To be in something as iconic as a Dracula film, and to be playing Jessica van Helsing, who would have been Dracula’s choice for a bride, through history and beyond the grave, was a thrill.

In Kenya you’ve got the great birds and monkeys leaping through the trees overhead. It’s a chance to remember what the world is really like.

I’d been a Bond girl and in Dracula films and ‘Coronation Street,’ but I was always hunting for work. After ‘The New Avengers,’ I never had to wait for work again.

Giraffes are completely tranquil – they have no predators as adults because there’s not an animal in the jungle stupid enough to go for them.

I can’t see any difference in having your hair dyed, your teeth fixed, your nose done, or your face smoothed out or lifted.

It’s nice when you happen into a vegetarian restaurant, but really, you can find veggie food everywhere. Pastas, salads, a vegetable plate – I actually like ordering vegetarian in a meaty place because it gives them a jolt to come up with something and recognize the demand.

Greece has got something like 1,400 islands. There is so much of Greece you can’t know even if you’re Greek. It’s sprinkled out all around the edge of the Aegean, all over the place. It’s already a secret place wherever you go, even if it’s somewhere huge like Athens or Corinth. The place enchanted me.

Buy an atlas and keep it by the bed – remember you can go anywhere.

Cameras love pretty girls and craggy, old character men more than they can take craggy, old character women. But that’s what’s always happened. Work out how you can fit into it, and make that work. There are never going to be millions of parts for older actresses because there never were.

If you haven’t understood that if you are born you die, you scarcely deserve to be able to be alive.

I think we could jam a bit more in our coffins than we do. I’m going to have some books, some I haven’t finished or haven’t read, some feathers and nice bits and pieces, the odd note. Just on the journey for the next bit.

I’m a pathetic haggler and often give more than the original price out of a misplaced sense of duty.

All you have to be is kind. That’s all you need. Once you’ve got that, it virtually rules out everything else.

Romance is quite an overblown word. This idea of chocolates and champagne and that’s it. There’s more to love than that. Romance is quite a soppy word. Love is much more important.

I think we could jam a bit more in our coffins than we do. I’m going to have some books, some I haven’t finished or haven’t read, some feathers and nice bits and pieces, the odd note. Just on the journey for the next bit.

I think most of the world would like to be Scottish. All the Americans who come here never look for English blood or Welsh, only for Scottish and Irish. It’s understandable. The Scots effectively created the face of the modern world: the railways, the bridges, the tunnels.

When you’re young, you think life is forever, but it’s finite. I’m 68, so even by the maddest measurements, I’m in the last bit of life.