"I had to hide every morning, until Daddy had gone out to work. And then stay out late to try to avoid him in the evening. Because of these terrible rows. Mummy would come and try to get me to go back home in the middle of the day. After about a year the school said look, this cannot carry on. I had to leave."

“It's really splendid, my dear. Are you going to bring it into town?”

“I can remember what I ate. Coconut squares dipped in chocolate, wrapped in gold paper.”

“I think my parents had visions of me being found in the Thames with six illicit foetuses in my womb and needle marks up my arm.”

“I remember once saying that I'd like to go to university. My father told me: 'I would rather see you dead at my feet than have you go to a university.' I'm laughing about it now, but at the time I was terribly upset. I didn't even understand what going to university meant.”

“You get set on a path and, if you succeed, you get better parts, but of the same kind. If you don't take a lot of trouble, you get stuck like that.”

“We'd seen all the rushes, which we thought very funny, but the premiere audience reaction was cold and so were the reviews. However, the moment it was released it made audiences everywhere laugh like anything, and it showed that our original reaction had been right. What a relief!”