Kate O'Mara Quotes

I feel strongly for the younger actresses when a lot of their career is based on how they look. That must be hard when your looks begin to go and you haven't built up the wealth of character parts to get into something else.

My career seems to have worked out OK, especially since I turned 40. I've always had a character part, mind you - I've never played the princess. But if you're used to doing that, it must be soul-destroying to hit 40 and suddenly find there's nothing for you to do.

Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women, on the other hand, people say, 'Why doesn't she retire?'

I think I'm in a business where you have to look good, and it's totally youth-oriented.

Women's currency is their looks. Like it or not, the most powerful woman is an 18-year-old woman.

If you don't look like Rupert Graves or Hugh Grant, they'll have you playing the gardener.

It's funny: a lot of roles I do read for mention physical presence - like, 'built like a quarterback' - and for me, it's pretty boring because I don't want that to be the most important thing. I'm not trying to be Dwayne Johnson.

Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.

I hate that thing that if you are over 45, and you're going to be on telly or make films, you have to do all this stupid stuff to your face. I would no more let someone stick a needle in my forehead than fly to the moon.

It's difficult for a young girl like me. Because there's a certain time for young actresses, which is like a really juicy period when all the parts are love interests and young heroines. Of course, there's always work for men whatever age they are.

I find it interesting that 16-year-olds are having plastic surgery. People in their 40s used to think, 'I'm aging, I have to do something about it.' Now children are deciding they don't like the way they look.

In Hollywood, no one is happy with who they are. When they're young, they want to look older. When they're older, they're getting botox shot in their face to look younger.

Here in L.A. the standard of beauty is kind of ridiculous. I want to be doing this when I'm in my fifties and sixties and this isn't what I'm going to look like.

I played teen roles until high definition came out, and I could never understand it. I would go in for adult roles and be older than many of the people auditioning, but they'd cast the girl without a line on her face.

It's every woman's tragedy, that, after a certain age, she looks like a female impersonator. Mind you, we've known some lovely female impersonators, in our time.

Men are allowed to get older and women are not.

I don't want to be left in the past. When I stand next to Kylie, Beyonce or Rihanna, I don't want to be a decrepit old lady.

I'm not homely enough to play the nerdy girl and not nearly pretty enough to play the pretty girl.

I came in the Dawson's Creek era; it was all about tiny guys who looked like teenagers, and I haven't looked like a teenager ever. So I was, like, auditioning to be their dads. At 25.

There is no question that the older you get, the fewer good roles there are.

Well, I mean she's of a certain biological age but she didn't have to go around with fat patches and stuff.

Male authors always take care to make their heroes at least one inch taller than they are, and considerably more muscular. Just as female authors give their heroines better hair and slimmer thighs.

When you get older, unless you're a huge star, the parts become less and the competition becomes greater. Because the guys left standing are the best.

I see myself at a certain age as not being able to play the kind of parts that would keep me stimulated, and I can't imagine my life ending professionally the moment that I've got to go to the plastic surgeon and have my face rearranged.

Men are boys for such a long time and really don't start getting the great roles until they're in their mid-thirties. But then they've got a long time to do them, whereas for women, it's all about playing younger and younger and younger.