Happy birthday, Emma Thompson! The charming and fiercely funny British actress and writer turns 57 on April 15. Read on for some of her most delightful quotes on parenting, getting older and why you shouldn’t take yourself too seriously.
1. “I’d rather have a root canal treatment for the rest of my life than join Twitter.”
—Vanity Fair, 2014
2. “People wanting to be 35 when they’re 50 makes me think: why? Why don’t you want to be 50 and be good at that?”
—The Guardian, 2014
3. On ageism in Hollywood: “I remember somebody saying to me that I was too old for Hugh Grant, who’s like a year younger than me, in Sense and Sensibility. I said, ‘Do you want to go take a flying leap?’”
—Vulture, 2015
4. “I believe that actors and anyone in the arts should be outsiders, so that we can say whatever we want and hold a mirror up, as Shakespeare says, to what’s really going on in the world. We shouldn’t be within the pale of polite society. It’s a disaster that actors have become so respectable.”
—The Advocate, 2014
5. On playing Professor Trelawney in the Harry Potter films: “I had great fun doing it. The genius of that costume—the wig and glasses—I mean, Barack Obama could have played her. I did a silly voice but really it was that costume.”
—Parade, 2013
6. “There’s that cliche about not working with animals and children, but I don’t think that’s true…Although you should never work with donkeys.”
—The Morning Call, 2006
7. On voicing Mrs. Potts, a teapot, in the forthcoming Beauty and the Beast: “I have spent a lot of time considering the emotional life of crockery.”
—Vulture, 2015
8. “A lot of very beautiful women can be a pain because all they’re thinking about is how they look.”
—Good Housekeeping, 2010
9. “We’re all supposed to be happy all the time. What is that about? Why have we lost contact with the possibility of saying, ‘Do you know what? I can’t do that. Sorry, I can’t manage that as well.’”
—Good Housekeeping, 2010
10. “Sometimes you’ll have some thing, and sometimes you’ll have other things. And you do not need it all at once; it’s not good for you.”
—Good Housekeeping, 2010
11. “You can’t imagine what satisfaction can be gotten from throwing a pie in someone’s face.”
—The Morning Call, 2006
12. “The films I’ve made for children have been my hardest work, my best, because kids deserve the best. You look at what’s out there for children today, these awful things, the cynicism of it. It’s about selling products; children going, ‘I want the toy.’ I mean, in my day there was such a thing as selling out.”
—Parade, 2013
13. On parenting: “Only fight the really important battles. Sometimes be a bit naughty and anarchic. Surprise them. Stress the value and bliss of sleep.”
—Good Housekeeping, 2010
14. “The British aren’t really known for their physical loveliness, but firemen, generally speaking, are gorgeous.”
—The Morning Call, 2006
15. “Maybe I don’t take myself so seriously anymore. And I don’t care how I’m judged. I’m past all that.”
—The Telegraph, 2006