Obviously we had to study Shakespeare at school, but to be honest, I was not a fan. I found the language very difficult, and I didn't enjoy watching it or studying it. I auditioned five times for the Royal Shakespeare Company early on in my career, and I didn't even get past the first rounds.
Peter Hall was just organizing the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was going to be an ensemble, it was going to be in repertory, it was going to have a home in London as well as in the Midlands, and all of those things were happening at that time.
I did fringe theatre for so many years, and then I got my first play at the RSC, which was an amazing feeling, but I was 30 and had started acting in my early twenties.
I've done maybe twelve of Shakespeare's plays. I was with the Royal Shakespeare Company for years. Whatever influence that has never leaves you. If you learn to drive a car, and you learn the right way if there is ever a right way. You learn the good aspects, you learn to drive properly. And that never leaves you.
England is a mecca for actors who want to do the classics.
I had a dialect coach from the Royal Shakespeare Company who was from Sheffield.
Do you know, I have no idea how I got 'The Avengers'? I'd left the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I was one of a long list of girls, and got it on my audition.
After a West End run, in which I was promoted to Laertes, I joined the RSC in 1972. I had fulfilled my dream.
The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.
Theatre is what I've always done, really, especially with the RSC, but I do bits and pieces on TV.
I'm a pro! No, what I mean is I have performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. I have been all over the place. I have studied theatre for seven years.
I've never done stand-up; I came via small-scale touring theatre, through the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, then I got employed on that as an actor who had a humorous sensibility.
When I left drama school, saying you were going to the RSC made you a laughing stock.
I played Benedick in 'Much Ado About Nothing' nearly 30 years ago at the RSC, alongside Susan Fleetwood as Beatrice, and I loved every minute.
I did a lot of musicals when I was young and finally went to drama school to try and get away from doing musicals... and of course the first thing that happened when I got out is I got offered a musical. And then when I got to the Royal Shakespeare Company, which was my next job, I ended up doing a bloody musical!
I think you have lots of actors who would much rather do a wonderful part at the Royal Shakespeare Company, but then you have to take a two-line part in a TV thing to pay the bills.
When you study, as I did, every theatrical beginning in this country, none of them have been greeted well. The Royal Shakespeare Company was a disaster, Peter Hall was a disaster, Richard Eyre was a disaster, Trevor Nunn was always a disaster.
I saw a production of 'Titus Andronicus' at the Royal Shakespeare Company with Brian Cox back in 1987. That sort of rocked my world. It was a remarkable production in its simplicity and its realism and passion.
I went to the Guilford School of Music and Drama, which was affiliated with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I was lucky enough to be taught by a beautiful, wonderful teacher called Patsy Rodenberg, who works a lot with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a voice coach and technician.
Oh, come off it, I've only directed three plays for the RSC.
Fifteen years ago I walked out of a production of one of my plays at the RSC because I decided it was a waste of time.
