It started at 49 with 'Tango in Halifax' and then 'Happy Valley.' I can't complain at a time when most actors are disappearing. I seem to have become very visible.

Even though I had pushed through the Tango album, it was just not a very good environment to be in on a daily basis. In many ways, this is the best time of my life.

I started buying records in the '80s. I listened to everything new wave, disco, funk synth-pop, rock, but in my house we were listening to bossa nova, tango, and folk.

If you talk about the 'Tango in the Night' album, the reason I didn't do that tour was because the album took about 10 months, and it was such an uncreative atmosphere.

I tell myself things will be different in a few years' time, but this is the most wonderful, golden time for me. I'm basking in the success of 'Tango', really loving it.

The money part is one of the most difficult things. Coppola always said I should do a tango movie. If it hadn't been for him, I don't know where we would have gotten the money.

My goal now is to dance all the dances as long as I can, and then to sit down contented after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on because there wasn't another dance left in me.

The tango is a very interior dance. It's not an exterior - it's not flashy and all over the floor. It's a very interior dance when you see the old guys dance in the clubs. I learned everything from the old guys in the clubs.

When I last looked, there weren't queues of eager guys under 40 hanging outside single ladies' doors begging them to give up work and have their babies. It takes two to tango and the same number, without medical help, to make a child.

Look at Nicola Walker in 'Last Tango in Halifax.' She has the most wonderful face. You just want to look at her. And if she'd gone off and had Botox and facelifts, I wouldn't want to look at that face because it wouldn't express anything.

People who've never played a sport in their life come to WWE and can kick butt. On the other hand, people who've played football or some other professional sport can come here and get in the ring and not do what we do. It's a different tango.

I wanted to have a reaction from the audience. I wanted to be able to talk to somebody, and not be talking just to myself. That's when I did 'The Conformist,' 'Last Tango in Paris,' etc. And I found it was incredibly rewarding, something new.

I wouldn't go so far as to make 'You Don't Own Me' a tango or 'It's My Party' a hip-hop thing. Believe me, those things have been suggested to me. But I thought if I could stay true to the song, the arrangements would work. I'm really enjoying singing them.

I did go to public school, but that's only because my parents were abroad. As a matter of fact, I think that's helped my work. I can go from Victoria Wood's 'Dinnerladies' to playing Barbara Cartland, from 'Coronation Street' to playing Celia in Last 'Tango'.

Twerking takes its place in a long line of dance moves deemed immoral, even apocalyptic. The waltz was called sinful because it demanded dangerously close contact between dance partners. In 1914, the tango earned a papal denunciation for being 'damaging to the soul.'

Back in 1985, I was working on my third solo album when the band came to me and asked me to produce the next Fleetwood Mac project. At that point, I put aside my solo work - which was half finished - and committed myself for the next seventeen months to producing 'Tango in the Night.'

I was never particularly a part of the following of tango; I just liked it... most of all, I recognized that the urban content and the approach seemed very familiar and very connected to the songs that I was doing, the kind of songs that I wanted to write - the songs about the street.

I don't know if a penny's dropped somewhere, but you've had 'Lark Rise to Candleford,' you've had 'Cranford,' you've had 'Last Tango in Halifax,' you've had 'Call the Midwife'... I think the largest portion of the viewing public are over 55, and they like to see people they can identify with.

If somebody were to feel the necessity to reduce themselves to a desperate state to achieve what they perceive to be their goals in life, people who work in fashion, who are models or photographers, shouldn't be judged because of untoward acts of others. As the saying goes, it takes two to tango.

If you look at the whole time I was in the band, I only did, like, three solo albums - two, really. 'Out Of The Cradle,' I had already left because we'd done 'Tango In The Night,' and it was sort of the logical extension of crazy in terms of everyone getting ready to hit the wall with their habits.

Yes, I love going to fittings and talking about the history of a costume. For 'Versailles,' a play set in 1919, the costume designer told me that pocket squares had just been introduced. The tango was becoming fashionable in London, and dancers used them to mop their brows. I love to learn fascinating stuff like that.

I'm a bad walker but I can dance tango. You know why? Put your hand up. Push on my fingertips and just hold it. In tango, your feet are free but the top of your body pushes, so if I feel like I'm gonna fall, my partner can catch me. So I walk with a stick but I can totally dance the tango. It's a romantic kind of thing.

My sister gave my two-and-a-half year old this book called 'And Tango Makes Three,' about the gay penguin couple at the Central Park Zoo. They cared for an orphan egg 'til it hatched and then raised the baby penguin as their own. I cannot get through this book without copious amounts of tears and snot running down my face.

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