Top 27 Quotes by Lesley Manville

I had two starts, really. The first was going to the Italia Conti stage school, aged 15. I'd gone to sing, but one day I found myself doing an improvisation and thought, 'Oh God, I quite like this acting thing.' The second start was meeting Mike Leigh when I was 22. He showed me I could play people that weren't like me.

It gets easier as you get older because life deals its particular hand, and our experiences get deeper, richer, more profound. When I gave birth to my son, something happened. It is a huge thing for a woman: a whole set of emotions you never had before arrives, and a love you never had before in your life is now on tap.

Oh, there's so much ego with men; in their head, they can't possibly think about Tesco's when they are doing Othello. Er, why not? They want to think that they are such geniuses they can't muddy their day with domesticity, and I've got no truck with it whatsoever.

I think that distributors and marketing companies realise that there are a huge number of women over 40 who want to go the cinema and see films about themselves. Women of my age don't want to be force-fed with stuff about 25-year-olds.

There isn't a spare minute in the day. I have spent my life doing everything. I work. I go home. I do the shopping. I cook. Then there's the laundry and the dog. Most of my life, I have been a working mother. And even when I wasn't, I still did it all.

With learning lines, before I had Alfie, I'd put it off and think, 'Oh, I'll just have a glass of wine and then do it later,' but when you've finally got a child to bed and you know you've only got an hour, then you achieve so much.