- Roger Michell: What would your advice be to your young self?
- Judi Dench: Oh, christ...
- Joan Plowright: I would say get in touch with yoga or mindfulness at quite an early age. And learn about the brain and what influence it has on the body. All those things that I've come to be interested in later on in life and could have done with doing earlier.
- Eileen Atkins: Well, I think Joan kind of leads to a version of mine, which I would say is not to be so very bad tempered and confrontational. And listen more.
- Maggie Smith: Honest to God, I don't know, because most likely I wouldn't be listening . But I would say: When in doubt, don't.
- Joan Plowright: That's good. It should be a motto, that. When in doubt, don't.
- Judi Dench: I would say: Try not to be so susceptible to falling in love.
- Eileen Atkins: No - be more susceptible.
- Joan Plowright: My agent in America said to me, when he knew I couldn't do very much because of the eyesight going, and he said, "Well, if you do want to come over again, we'll look around for a nice little cameo that Judi Dench hasn't got her paws on."
- [all laugh]
- Judi Dench: How rude.
- Maggie Smith: It's not rude at all.
- Judi Dench: It's very, very rude.
- Joan Plowright: Well, that's America, darling. That's how they talk.
- Joan Plowright: You said a marvelous thing, Judi, when you were asked to do Cleopatra.
- Judi Dench: I can't remember. I just remember people laughing openly.
- Joan Plowright: But you said to Peter Hall, was it, that was in charge? You said - do you want me to say it?
- Judi Dench: "Are you sure you want a menopausal dwarf to play this part?"
- Joan Plowright: Exactly.
- Joan Plowright: Do you think we ought to have a glass of champagne around this one?
- Eileen Atkins: Yes.
- Maggie Smith: Why didn't anybody think of that a few hours ago?
- Maggie Smith: [on first working with Laurence Olivier] I think I was more nervous of Laurence than the critics.
- Joan Plowright: What?
- Maggie Smith: I was more nervous of your husband than the critics. I must admit. As indeed everybody was, Joan.
- Joan Plowright: [laughing] I don't think you ever showed it.
- Maggie Smith: No, everybody was. We were terrified.
- Joan Plowright: ...It was momentous. Earth shattering for me. A very, very strange experience. Although it was a great privilege to share in his life, as well as it being, you know, a bit of a nightmare sometimes. The actual burden of going on knowing that those who don't really go for you are gonna say, "Well, of course, you know, it's her husband who put her up in it." That was my sort of burden.
- Roger Michell: Reviews?
- Maggie Smith: You don't read them.
- Judi Dench: You certainly don't read them. Somebody will always tell you, won't they?
- Maggie Smith: Oh, yeah. Particularly if it's dreadful.
- Eileen Atkins: Caryl Brahms years and years ago...
- Judi Dench: Oh, I was just going to say Caryl Brahms...
- Eileen Atkins: -- came up to me at a party when I was about early 20s and said, "I'm so sorry I had to be so cruel to you." And I hadn't known and I didn't know what she was talking about. Of course, that was the nicest way I could have answered her. I mean, it was a good thrust back. I said, "I'm sorry, I don't k now what you're talking about." But it was genuine. I didn't know what she was talking about. And after that I thought, oh, you must check up on what's said about you.
- Judi Dench: Well, I think that's not wise.
- Eileen Atkins: Each generation thinks they've found the "natural" way to do something.
- Joan Plowright: It's always very difficult for me to hear Shakespeare being done in a "natural" way, with pauses anywhere they like, and "uh, uh, um" because they think it gives the impression that they're thinking of it absolutely of the moment. But I mean, you know, Shakespeare is poetry. And it does have a rhythm...
- Judi Dench: And there is a way of using the poetry and being naturalistic. And that seems to be, if it's done and things are changed and it's broken up, it seems to me to be losing entirely out on the other side of it.
- Joan Plowright: Yes. Exactly. It's like you bring it down to you and your size instead of reaching up to something.
- Joan Plowright: They assume - well, I'm talking about critics - that we all assume we're the bee's knees and will take on these parts. They don't realize that we're shaking inside.
- Eileen Atkins: On the way to the theater I always think, would you like to be run over now? Or in a massive car accident? And I only just come out on the side of no.
- [all laugh]
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