- "I thought Shaw [George Bernard Shaw] asked all young actresses to do those parts. It never occurred to me that he thought I was something special. He was a real charmer. Once, he wrote that I was playing "Saint Joan" as though I was cataleptic".
- The first Oscar I ever saw was on Mr. Shaw's mantelshelf in his home at Ayot St. Lawrence. My first thought on hearing that I had got one was that if the great G.B.S. thought it was respectable then who was I to worry?
- [on Separate Tables (1958)] "We were all English except Burt [Burt Lancaster] and dear Rita Hayworth. She made a jolly good stab at the film, and she was a lovely creature; I have never been large but Rita was so delicately boned she made me feel like a camel! It was a bizarre idea to transport all that was so English to Hollywood, but it was a very good film. I know I won an Oscar for it, but it was always the best part in the play".
- It's amazing what they give these awards for. All I seemed to do was walk in and out of doors and look over my shoulder at Burt Lancaster. They cut out my two best scenes, you know. I was frightfully cross. - regarding her Oscar-winning work in Separate Tables (1958).
- I think a little posterity must always be nice. After I'm dead I'll probably be a cult and they'll have entire seasons of me at the National Film Theatre. Thank God I won't have to watch them all.
- [on Gabriel Pascal]: He came to grief when he tried to direct. He had enormous charm and he tried to be clever, but, unlike Korda, he wasn't a bit clever. He didn't make any money for himself; he was just an old bumbler-on with great charm.
- [speaking in 1988, during the run of "Driving Miss Daisy", in which she played the title role] Luckily, West End audiences seem to rather like very old people. They think, 'My God, we saw her acting in the war and there she is still doing it,' and mentally they give you a sort of prize for sheer survival, as long as you turn up every night and remember most of the lines. Not that it ever gets any easier to do.
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