Joanna Lumley Quotes

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Joanna Lumley

Profession : Actress

Birth : May 1, 1946

You see, there weren't these magazines like 'Heat' in my day. Always waiting to trip up these pretty girls and make them seem something horrible, something to make them look stupid and small and ugly and disgusting.

Joanna Lumley

All you have to be is kind. That's all you need. Once you've got that, it virtually rules out everything else.

Joanna Lumley

There was one 'crime' during the whole time I was at school, when a fountain pen went missing. Stealing just didn't happen. I was taught not to shoplift, not to steal, not to behave badly. We weren't even allowed to drop litter.

Joanna Lumley

I've always used my hair for whatever it is needed for. I had it an inch long and jet black for a Pinter play I did. Changes you completely.

Joanna Lumley

My mother early on taught us to respect all animals, and I mean all animals - not just cats and dogs but rats and snakes and spiders and fish and wildlife, so I really grew up believing they are just like us and just as deserving of consideration.

Joanna Lumley

Way back in the 1970s, I was eating a steak, and I looked down, and for the first time it suddenly looked like flesh to me - like a dead creature. In a flash, I realized that every time I ate any kind of meat, something had been killed for me, and I stopped eating all animals, not just cows and pigs but chickens and fish.

Joanna Lumley

It's nice when you happen into a vegetarian restaurant, but really, you can find veggie food everywhere. Pastas, salads, a vegetable plate - I actually like ordering vegetarian in a meaty place because it gives them a jolt to come up with something and recognize the demand.

Joanna Lumley

I could never go into politics, because I'm far too impatient and I'd want to be a dictator, albeit a benevolent one... I would hope.

Joanna Lumley

I'd describe myself as a saver, but just sometimes I can spend like a kicking horse! Ryman is the one shop I can't go past without going into. I just can't resist lovely stationery.

Joanna Lumley

I think I'm a spiritual person. I don't really go to church often when services are on, but I like going in when they are empty and quiet, and just sitting there and thinking for a little while.

Joanna Lumley

The concept of Shwopping is so clever, I think. The idea is that every time someone goes shopping, they can take an unwanted item of clothing and pop it in the recycling bin in their M&S store for Oxfam.

Joanna Lumley

As Brits, we love a do, don't we? I adore our national celebrations. If I see a gold coach, you almost need to put me in a straitjacket, I get so excited.

Joanna Lumley

I do not like bad photographs. I don't like to be badly lit. There is a fashion, particularly on stage, for very 'toppy' lighting, which makes a child look 50. Ten o'clock is very good. If someone is taking a picture, you say, 'Lamps at 10 o'clock,' then everybody looks lovely.

Joanna Lumley

Women are very different to men, and that hasn't been respected. So when people say there's never been a good woman painter or poet or engineer or whatever, they don't understand that our skills are many simultaneously and men's skills are single.

Joanna Lumley

When I was trying to get into acting, to have been a model was about as low as you could get in the acting profession. But that wasn't sexism, it was snobbery, which I knew and took very humbly.

Joanna Lumley

Oh, I'm not beautiful. I can look beautiful; I can put beauty on. When I'm tired, I look bloody awful. I think I'm turning into the actress from 'Dynasty,' Linda Evans.

Joanna Lumley

You can't be vain as an actor. In 'Ab Fab,' we were made up as old women with bald wigs and jowly necks, and we looked fantastic.

Joanna Lumley

I have never had anything done to my face because then you end up looking as they all do in America. Look at Judi Dench: she would never be as good if she had had work done.

Joanna Lumley

I never wanted to go to university: books seemed to have all the answers, and the questions, too. I went to work for Jean Muir as her in-house model. Miss Muir - as she will always be to me - was interested in everything.

Joanna Lumley

Our bodies will be recycled one way or another, but what about our ideas and minds and characters? Primordial soup? The bourne from which no traveller returns? Interesting and exciting.

Joanna Lumley