Most people look at ageing as a disease. They do. They have prescriptions and places where you go to eradicate it.

I'm so lucky to have a career in my fifties. And to still have the desire to do it. I don't think about retirement.

My male friends don't seem to have any feelings of intimidation that I am a 100-watt sex bomb standing next to them.

I'm smart with my money, I invest conservatively. I don't mind paying top-dollar, but I don't want to get ripped off.

There are many ways to be a mother. I have a lot of young actors I mentor, and my nieces and my nephews need a lot of love.

You know within three seconds if you're going to have a history with someone - it's a long half-hour if you've got it wrong.

Talented people are written off once they hit their 50s and 60s, and the saddest thing is, we just get better as we get older.

My curiosity and my appetite for evolving as an actor is one of the main components of me still working today in the business.

Someone recently asked what I am most proud of. The thing I'm most proud of is that I'm in my 50s and I'm still a leading lady.

I prefer younger men. In some ways, they are much more open to a woman being stronger and independent then some of the men my age.

My experiences in film and theatre in the States have been much more rigorous-in England there's an environment of, Let's try this.

What would be really difficult is to be sitting on a beach. There's vacations, and there's vegetations. I don't do well vegetating.

I actually think 'Sex and the City' helped share how complicated it all is, to be a wife, a mother, and working, and a sexual being.

I like to step outside of what people's idea of me might be. I suppose that makes me a bit of a rule-breaker. I like to take chances.

Theatre is immediate, it's alive, you're there with the audience, it can't be done again and again and again and again, it's organic.

When I got out of my Twenties I stopped playing women that were victims. I like playing women who are strong and have a piece of mind.

I wanted to understand pain and the human condition, which is full of pain and regret and sadness - and some happiness, if you're lucky.

I have a big appetite, and staying on top of that is about knowing myself and saying, 'I can eat that today, but tomorrow I'm not going to.'

I sort of have a love affair with my work. Many of us work far too hard and we don't put enough value in the epicurean, sensual part of life.

Whenever I go to bars in London, people send me over Cosmopolitans. It's a very sweet gesture, but I don't like them, so they just sit there.

When you're filming, you work 19-hour days, and you know more about what's going on with your crew and co-workers than you do with your husband.

The older I get, the less jarring I want my exercise to be, and I find that a long walk is equally as helpful and satisfying as a three-mile jog.

What I'm now discovering - and I'm now in another decade - is that the older I get the more I have my self knowledge which makes me feel more sexy.

I've been playing sexually aware women most of my life. At this point I expected to be playing moms and wives. It's exciting to play a femme fatale.

I enjoyed making people laugh. I discovered that I loved that power over them. On stage, I felt I could really express who I was for the first time.

I take care of myself, which includes dieting, exercising and minimising stress. I joke that I've been on a diet since 1974, which is basically true.

I always assumed that, like my mother before me, one day I would have children. When I was 5, my fantasy was to have a hundred dogs and a hundred kids.

Looking good has never been the most important thing to me. Maybe it's because I'm more conventionally, um, acceptable, so it's not an issue for me. I don't know.

I've seen some women who are not particularly attractive but they have an assurance, and there's something so attractive about someone who doesn't have to work so hard.

A pilot is like the most extensive dress rehearsal you can ever imagine, because the writers are learning about the actors, the actors are learning about the characters.

I don't want to be in boardrooms talking about hiring hairdressers and minivans. I'm not good at it, and I don't like to hire and fire people. I hate that. It's horrible.

Tennessee Williams was so adept at portraying characters who are both fallible and vulnerable. Women were a huge influence in his life, his mother and sister in particular.

I've learned that I can't have a packed work schedule and a packed social schedule and a packed personal life; I need to just have time to myself to sit and breathe and unwind.

A successful television series can chain you to a schedule of long hours and can put your personal life on hold. But after it is all over, if you survive, then anything is possible.

I feel I disappoint people when I am not 'Samantha.' They seem surprised when I don't have the same voice and the same mannerisms. They were booking 'Samantha,' and I would show up.

I try not to listen to the shoulds or coulds, and try to get beyond expectations, peer pressure, or trying to please - and just listen. I believe all the answers are ultimately within us.

I think the wonderful thing about doing theater is that it's more of an actor's medium. I think that film is more of a director's medium. You can't edit something out on stage. It's there.

If my accomplishments frighten someone, it's nothing to do with me - that's to do with them. But the men who are in my life see me as a person - as a woman - not as a character I've played.

I've realized that the most important thing I can do to look good is just treat myself well, whether it's getting a nice, long massage or just lying low and not going out every single night.

I was very close to my father. At the age of ten I wanted to do plays, and my father was very encouraging. When I applied to different acting schools, he was right there and very supportive.

I did a school play when I was 10 where I played a cold germ infecting a whole classroom of kids. The play was called 'Piffle It's Only a Sniffle.' I'd never had so much fun. It was a thrill.

Being a biological mother just isn't part of my experience this time around. However, I am a mother who continues to give birth to ideas and ways of experiencing life that challenge the norm.

I'm a woman of a certain age who doesn't have kids and never really settled down ... I enjoy kids but not for long periods. I think they're adorable and funny and sweet, and then I have a headache.

I'm not expecting much work in Hollywood, to be honest. People stick to film because they tend to get offered the same roles over and over again, and it's safe. But I'm not interested in doing that.

I don't know many women who can relate to Sharon Stone and the kind of movies she does. I don't know a lot of guys who can relate to Tom Cruise's movies because they're on a kind of fantastic level.

There's still the part of me that wants to leap at every opportunity, but now there's the other side that says, 'Let's just wait a minute and see what happens.' That's intuition, and it comes with age and experience.

It was difficult when I was very young because I was so separated from my family. When I was at school or acting in a play, I felt very much part of something, and then it would always change, and I would be by myself.

When you're filming, you work 19-hour days and you know more about what's going on with your crew and co-workers than you do with your husband. You're away, you miss things. It's taxing. Relationships fail because of it.

You have to be desirable. And that's why so many woman of my age or even younger are pushed to Botox and plastic surgery, all the things that people say, 'Why do women do this?' Where do you go in your 50s in your career?

There's a positive side to film and television, the sense of feeding into the theater... Your fans will follow you, hopefully, and be open-minded to see you play other things and experience other stories you want to tell.

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