Actresses From England

"If I should go before the rest of you, Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone, Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice, But be the usual selves That I have known."

"Nobody is safe. Deviate by a hair's-breadth from normal behaviour in her presence and you become a specimen in her collection. She has the ear to record every nuance of vour talk and the tongue to reproduce it."

"They look quite promising in the shop, and not entirely without hope when I get them back into my wardrobe. But then, when I put them on they tend to deteriorate with a very strange rapidity and one feels sorry for them."

"Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor, Doing the military two-step, as in the days of yore."

"Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as chaos."

"George - don't do that."

"I was allowed to slave for them For ever and evermore. Oh, I was allowed to fetch and carry For my Three Brothers, Jim and Bob and Harry."

"I have been fortunate to play some fantastic roles in musicals and I find it difficult to say which is my favourite. It's generally whichever I am playing at the time. However playing Eva Peron in Evita will always be particularly special to me. Being chosen to originate the role in the premiere of a much sought after and what became a ground-breaking, award-winning musical which launched my career was a great challenge and it gave me the opportunity to play more great roles in the future."

"My first singing role was as Susanna in a school production in a shortened form of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. I loved to sing and I was given lots of encouragement by a wonderful music teacher Mrs Ann Hill and by my parents who suggested I go to drama school."

"I couldn't tell anyone about it. I didn't want anyone to know. It's only now that I've survived, I'm able to speak about it. As far as I know I'm clear and completely well - but it never leaves you completely. It's made me learn a lot about myself. When you're on your own, you've just got to get on with it, grit your teeth and think, 'Right, I'm going to beat this.' I did have my dear friend and, without him, I don't know what I would have done."

"It was the most terrible feeling. I'd had enough and I'd felt I'd lost something so very important to me. I thought it had died and gone away. And I was frightened it might not come back. I just didn't seem to be able to shake off this feeling of doom and gloom. I had to come home. But to what? I was tired. I missed New York and the show and the people. It was like a grieving process."

"I never for a moment considered not doing the show. When I did the show I became very emotional. Some of the lyrics suddenly took on an entirely different meaning. Words like, 'as if we never said goodbye' became more real."

"Although no one could question her zealous work ethic (she drove herself to breakdown performing in Pam Gems’s Piaf in 1993), Paige is not exactly known for her humility. In newspaper profiles, that dread word "difficult" is often applied, and yet here she is in the chorus line, cheerfully taking on a modest role in a musical with far more credibility and less bombast than the shows that made her name."

"Three years ago, around Christmas, when she was starring in The King and I in London, Mum was diagnosed with cancer. Elaine thought she should come out of the show, but Mum wanted her to finish her contract. That was very hard for Elaine, having to go on stage night after night knowing she wanted to be with Mum."

"I used to get nervous for Elaine before a show, but not any more. She likes to be really well prepared for a role; she's very hard on herself. I'd never want to put myself through that kind of stress."

"She is confident when she talks about singing and stagecraft, surprisingly diffident when it comes to anything outside her field."

"I never expected to like her at all - she has quite a reputation for being difficult and once told a male interviewer that she would no longer give interviews to female journalists because 'I don't trust other women in these situations. They establish a sisterhood with you and then betray it every time.' But actually I found her chatty, friendly, good humoured."

"The lush sound and the sheer power of her voice are, to put it simply, incredible."

"I would have liked to have had kids, and had a family, but I think in my profession it's quite difficult to achieve because you're always working. I think I'm the kind of person as well, had I had kids, I wouldn't have gone on working. I would have jacked it all in. But it's a wonderful life I have, so I'm very fulfilled in other ways. Am I ever bothered by it? Well it's too late now, (laughs)."

"It was terribly difficult. It's not something I ever wanted in my life. Naively I just thought, 'oh I've got this great part'. I never thought about the reality of all the stuff that went with it. I'm actually quite a shy person when I'm not on stage."

"I loved it. We would rehearse in this dark theatre, unaware of the sunny day outside, and be immersed in the magic of creating something from our imaginations."

"On the very rare occasion when they don't all jump up out of their seats I'm always mortified."

"And so one becomes, or I become, anyway, slightly obsessive, particularly about my health, because you wouldn't want to read the letters people write when you're off and they're disappointed - it's so awful, the guilt one feels for not being there."

"I thought: "Gosh, it really has been worth the wait." And I think had I gone with Evita, I probably wouldn't have been ready to deal with it. It was just the most perfect time to go with that particular show."

"It did something to me. I thought it was the most glorious melody."

"Oh, it was awful, and I vowed to myself I would never, ever push myself to the edge that much again. It was really frightening. Because absolutely everything seemed to be impossible to deal with, just little things became major - noise, if someone had a radio on, or even the sound of traffic, or being in someone's company for longer than 10 minutes - I started to find it all too much."

"I did miss the music a bit - but only in the wings, when I was waiting to go on. It seemed dreadfully quiet, rather unnerving. But the wonderful thing was that one didn't have to be quite so obsessive about one's health, and one's voice."

"If you’re a serious actor, you wouldn’t put yourself up for one of those shows in case you got bumped off the first week and all your colleagues saw it."

"My dad always told me that perseverance furthers. He was right."

"Learn to take rejection, keep fit and work only with the best in your field."

"Actors already striving in the theatre wouldn't dream of putting themselves on these shows; it means that only about 10% of the talent out there is being auditioned for parts."

"I've loved not being looked at so much since dyeing my hair dark for my part in Resident Evil: Apocalypse. With my normal blondey- brown colour, I get stared at so much, so I feel quieter, more low- key. It's like being undercover, as even friends of mine haven't recognised me. It was quite difficult to get used to. I would see a picture of someone blonde in a Polaroid or shop window and think: "Don't I look brilliant?" But then it wouldn't be me. But it does mean that I can wear brighter colours, as well as brighter lipsticks than usual. I've just done a shoot where I was wearing bright red lipstick - although that did feel a bit Eighties and weird, as if I were a Robert Palmer extra."

"Guillory in person is still more shockingly fascinating, the unguarded, free-associating opposite of any cliched Brit- babe."

"She’s an extraordinarily talented actor who is tremendously photogenic. She’s also a dead ringer for Jill Valentine."

"I've been trying to explain to friends who've seen the trailer and said, "Oh wow, it looks amazing and you're in it!" I'm like, "Well, yes, but that's my whole part!""

"I'm reading Our Ecstatic Days, by Steve Erickson. It's an extraordinary journey and the most exciting thing I've found since The Master and Margarita, which I've read about 20 times. I like being taken away somewhere by a book."

"In Hollywood, women hate each other. Everyone is so bitchy and they don't want younger actresses coming in and taking their roles. You only have to look at what it's done to Kate Beckinsale. She used be cool. Now I've heard she's got a clause in her contract saying that she can't be filmed bending over at more than a 45-degree angle because her boob implants slide up onto her collar bone."

"Worn with tights it is not an issue, although there is something deeply unfeminist about not being able to sit down in one comfortably."

"It's a Cuban thing. But he ate very well — lots of organic steak. When he was diagnosed, the doctors told him he'd had cancer for six years. This dated back to around the time of Chernobyl, when he was in Wales doing a gig and it was raining. He got absolutely soaked to the skin. He then drove five hours up to the north of Scotland, still wearing the wet jacket. Later, he read in a newspaper that the sheep in the part of Wales where he had been performing had been killed because the rain contained fallout from the disaster. His cancer was right across the back of his shoulders, where the rain had first hit him. He reckoned it was that which caused it.""

"I was expelled [from school]. It's a long story but once I was caught appearing on The Word and all the girls in the common room started shouting, 'Sir! Look sir, it's Sienna!' The girls reacted towards me in the same way anyone reacts when they're jealous. They were just jealous. Or were they actually trying to kill me?"

"No. You always feel very much alone. Everyone gets fractional about who's in the VIP bit, and you think about what's going on outside it. You can never hear anything or have a proper discussion... I prefer groups of six people, max."

"I really enjoy writing. Much more than other people enjoy reading it. What do I write? Nonsense. Diary stuff - when I want to have a conversation but need to clarify my thoughts first."

"Me and my brother used to spend a lot of time at music festivals, running away from skinheads. Then my brother became a skinhead... I used to get excruciatingly, mind-numbingly dull guitar lessons from my father: tonic, subdominant, dominant. Yeah, but how do I play it? Tonic, subdominant, mediant. This is a seventh. Great, how do I play it?"

""I do, and I hunt. I like small horses best. They're like small men. They have more to prove so they take all the more risks and jump higher and faster than all the rest."

""I said I could to get the part. It made me go slightly mad, because my brain would be spinning all night. But after my big fight scene, where it was just kick, kick, kick, turn, in a freezing graveyard at 5am, I remember coming home on fire, because my brain hadn't kicked in once. Which was really, really a relief."

"The acting was always disappointing. Silly stories about nonsense people. I felt really cheated by acting, because I've never really felt anything from it. I don't wanna be the women on television, who are always nice and do the right thing. I want to be the woman who makes mistakes and gets away with it. The Night Porter is my favourite film. Charlotte Rampling is boiling with rage and going, "I can do it worse. I'm badder, and dirtier than you will ever be, and you'll never break me." And I just love that."

"I've done more films than these people. Why aren't I getting those scripts?' Because my films never get released. So OK, I do Sorted, because it's going to get released, and hate every minute of it. You know, I am ambitious, in the sense of, I will eat as much cardboard as I have to swallow, in order to get to a place where I can make a great script."

"We were all in awe of Penny [Woolcock]. You feel so safe with her, you end up doing things that might seem offensive to other people. It's almost like being in a therapy session. You go a little bit further than you would normally. But in the orgy scene, where Marc's really getting a blowjob, I was like, `You've crossed the line!' Me and Alec were acting, and being loving and safe and showing the feeling of wanting to climb under someone's skin. For it to suddenly become something purely physical - I didn't think that needed to be real. But it was a situation that got out of hand. They filmed it at a swingers' club. There wasn't any way of stopping things, once they'd started. It's really gruesome and awful. But for the story, it's perfect. That scene was out of control. But by that point, so are the characters."

"It changes colour every time I do a film but I have this great guy called Rosario who works at a London salon called Hair Expressions who really knows what he’s doing. I’ve been told 80 times that I’ll have to have it all cut off because it’s ruined and then he fixes it. He’s the best hair man in the world.""

"I went out the other night for the first time in ages, just because I'd been so busy. As I came out of the cinema, I ran down the street to get cigarettes, and 30 guys followed me with cameras and shouted at me. It's all so strange. It's not a life I really live or understand."