“As soon as I gave birth, it was as if you understand them. They become people, not kids. You start to identify with them. You see yourself in them.”

“Being a mother adds another emotional dimension, a feel for children that I didn't have before I had one. They were a pain before.”

“Debate is so much better than denial.”

“Everyone comes up to me saying, 'Cooee, Julie! Hello!' as if I know them. Of course I don't bloody know them. Am I flummoxed by it? Sometimes. I think, 'Ooh, love, go easy.' For a time, I did feel this pressure that I had to be funny, but it passes.”

“I always loved my mother, felt loved, but she was judgmental. Her father in Ireland didn't approve of women generally, and she took on his values. She believed her own mother was foolish.”

“I can understand why people get annoyed at being remembered for one thing, but a lot of actors aren't remembered for anything. I don't mind that.”

“I couldn't watch Tom and Jerry. The cruelty was too much. I had all these strange images, of tiny animals, all mixed up.”

“I didn't come into the business to get awards or titles.”

“I don't know if you can change things, but it's a drop in the ocean.”

“I don't like being out of the crowd. It's lonely within a group.”

“I don't want to give up acting - it's what I am.”

“I felt my mother about the place. I don't think she haunts me, but I wouldn't put it past her.”

“I keep seeing myself in my daughter, and I see my mother in me and in her. Bloody hell.”

“I never had any acting heroes. I never really went to the theatre.”

“I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.”

“I remember Michael saying, 'Rich and famous? It's much better to be just rich'. I didn't quite get it to begin with. But he's right. You lose anonymity. I say to my family that you've no idea until you lose it how precious anonymity is.”

“I think comedy's something you can't learn. It's an instinct, which makes it rather elusive.”

“I wanted above all else not to be like my mum.”

“I was always someone who lived in the future all the time, it was always the next thing - dreams of escape.”

“I was asked about doing a nude shoot for men's magazine GQ. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.”

“I was having my teens in my 30s.”

“I was the little, funny one. I felt I was the child among grown women.”

“I went through bits of the 60s and thought myself a bit of a hippy.”

“I'd like to think there'll be too much of real life going on for me to want to do much acting.”

“I'd love to be in another film, but they haven't asked me. I think it's a shame but the prospects of me doing another one now are remote. Please do campaign on my behalf.”

“I'll tell you how it happened. The phone rang. Paul, my agent, goes, 'Would you like to play Meryl Streep's?' I said, 'Yeeees! I'll do it, whatever it is.' He said, 'It's Mamma Mia!.' I said, 'Oh no, which character? The fat friend?”

“I'm massively talented, and very, very beautiful in person; the public don't really realise that.”

“I'm more selective now I've got a family. I don't want to work all the time. My daughter's 12; I don't want to miss out on her life. Soon she'll be a teenager; she won't want me around.”

“I'm too young at 50. I'm not grown up yet. There's part of everybody like that.”

“I'm writing a novel about two actresses who go to New York, because that's what I know about. One has lost touch with reality, disappears and is picked up by a man.”

“In order to be creative you have to be allowed to fail.”

“It seems that when you get to a certain age you almost give yourself permission to misbehave and say what you think. People allow it, with very old people.”

“It wasn't being an alcoholic - it was going wild. It happened when I got famous. It was like having my teens in my early thirties: blotting out your life, not having to think about anything.”

“It's getting better but men still earn more and there are more jobs for them. Ageism is a big thing. Parts for women disappear as you get older.”

“It's getting better generally, daily, especially in TV, for women in acting; and age and looks count less. As more women come into the business. Change of any sort takes a long time to happen.”

“It's very strong after the birth. It's extraordinary. You can't watch anything to do with kids being harmed.”

“Jane Austen was an extraordinary woman; to actually be able to survive as a novelist in those days - unmarried - was just unheard of.”

“My grandmother lived with us for a short time while I was a child. Old people tend to be slightly more eccentric - they can behave the way they want.”

“My mother was born on a tiny farm in County Mayo. She was meant to stay at home and look after the farm while her brother and sister got an education. However, she came to England on a visit and never went back.”

“Oh all the time when Victoria Wood and I did our series. There were people asking 'Can women be funny?' People still ask that. It's like asking: 'Can women breathe in and out?'”

“Sixty felt like a big landmark. Not in a dreadful sense, but none of the other birthdays have bothered me. It's got labels on it - OAP, retirement - and I just wanted to take stock. I wanted to be in my greenhouse at home and at least give myself the opportunity of not working again.”

“Some people have a terrible stretch between family and work. It is a difficult thing to achieve.”

“Stage is the most exciting. Film is lovely, because it's like a family.”

“Suddenly, you are very much in the present, and you learn it's really the place where you should always live.”

“That's why I'm an actress - escaping into a world.”

“The characters do have a life of their own; it's weird.”

“The money isn't a lure. I've done very well out of this business.”

“The way I relax is I think, 'I haven't got anything coming up.' I like to know there are months ahead when I've got nothing.”

“There is this idea that appealing to youth is the only way forward. But that is no longer the case. Youth is not everything. Now we have all the baby-boomers in their 60s, like me, who are actively engaged in life - we're not retiring, we're not just being put out to grass once we hit 60.”

“There were all us baby boomers who had a grammar school education, started to learn, then went on the pill, the whole thing, and so there are today a lot more women writers, editors, producers, and so a lot more women's stories. God, the BBC's practically run by women.”

“We have to take risks with art. If we don't, it all becomes a bit boring.”

“You can't help but feel a little bit like a mother to the younger cast members.”