Glenda Jackson Quotes
"I had no real ambition about acting. But I knew there had to be something better than the bloody chemist's shop."
[On her Oscars] "My mother polishes them to within an inch of their lives until the metal shows. That sums up the Academy Awards - all glitter on the outside and base metal coming through. Nice presents for a day. But they don't make you any better."
"If I'm too strong for some people, that's their problem."
"An actor can do Hamlet right through to Lear, men of every age and every step of spiritual development. Where's the equivalent for women? I don't fancy hanging around to play Nurse in 'Romeo and Juliet'. Life's too short."
[speaking in 1974] "Ideally, one would love to work in England. But if no one in England is going to take their courage in both hands and dig into their pockets and finance films - then, you're going to have to work abroad."
"I was the archetypal spotty teenager who suffered the tortures of the damned because I wasn't like those girls in the magazines. I had lank, greasy hair and I was fat and spotty."
"If anyone thinks I looked sexy stripped in 'The Music Lovers', they must think Minnie Mouse is sexy."
[on acting] "You'd think it something one would grow out of. But you grow into it. The more you do, the more you realise how painfully easy it is to be lousy and how very difficult to be good."
"Men can be a great deal of work for very little reward."
"You see women in America who've had face-lifts - faces as smooth as melons. It makes my stomach turn to think about voluntarily putting myself under a surgeon's knife."
"One of the most depressing remarks that was made when I first came to the House of Commons was made by an MP who said, 'What d'you want to come here for? You're famous already'."
[on acting] "When I have to cry, I think about my love life. When I have to laugh, I think about my love life."
"If all the star system can offer its talent is the crap it does, then producers should pay through the eyes, ears, nose, mouth - any orifice you can think of."
"Why put make-up on when you only have to take it off again?"
"I used to empty ashtrays for the cigarette butts, re-roll them and make myself a fag. I used to live on a pound of sausages and a cooking apple."
"I was five months pregnant when I made that nude scene in Women In Love. I'd never had such a marvellous bosom."
