Felicity Kendal quotes:

My parents were very volatile but very loving. My father would get jealous if my mother looked at somebody. I used to be insanely jealous. It comes out of insecurity. It can come and go, but you get to the point in life where you don't have this raging jealousy and protectiveness about your world.

After making my stage debut aged nine as Macduff's small son in 'Macbeth,' I had played a number of parts, from 'Twelfth Night's Viola to 'The Merchant Of Venice's Portia'.

I think very few people do find a relationship where, every moment of every day, everything they do comes together. That's why, in a nutshell, everyone loved Barbara in 'The Good Life.' She was the perfect partner. It was a formula. She wasn't glamorous. She wasn't clever. But she was a good partner. That's too easy, too perfect.

Success breeds success, and failure leads to a sort of fallow period.

It's nice not to have lines when you frown, especially on TV. I don't know why people make such a fuss about it. No one is interested if a woman has her teeth capped or her hair dyed.

I'm lucky in that I don't like sweet things at all. My father loved cakes to such a degree that he kept forcing them down my throat when I was little, and it put me off for life. He had terrible cholesterol, poor thing.

A lot of my close friends are nothing to do with show business. But the people I've had relationships with, invariably, I've worked with. I think that's probably because I grew up in a family where we all worked together, so it's something I feel comfortable with.

My father was my trainer, my teacher. He was closer to my sister in the sense that she adored him and he adored her. He was more like my pal. Because of the 13-year gap, I think by the time I came along, it wasn't a big deal. I wasn't spoilt or cherished, I was just put to work.

Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich language of Shakespeare's plays at which, by then, I was something of an old hand.

When I was little I always thought I was marked out, special, on the verge of something momentous. I used to tingle with anticipation.

We take ourselves so seriously moment by moment, but India shows you a sense of eternity. You're one little ant on a hill. You're part of life, but you're not the whole thing.

For me, compatibility is a sense of humour, being able to laugh together; that is very important.

I don't think I've ever not had a dark side. But one of the wonderful reasons why you go into this business is that half your life you live in a fantasy, which is somebody else's life. It's actually a great release because you're not having to deal with the itty-bitty bits of life.

I did try fillers once. Don't ever have fillers because when your cheekbones are high, it's chipmunk time.

I love gentle, gorgeous classical music such as Mozart.

So many roles for women demand that you make the audience fall in love with you or sympathise with you.

Looking back, I got the bed I wanted and I lay in it. I didn't want to go to America. If you want to join that world, you have to go and live there, and that was something I could not have done. I am very much about family. It doesn't matter where I live, but I feel very needful of my people around me. Besides, theatre is my first love.

I have to say I am a 'Strictly' fan, which is why I am in it. I've always watched it for years. I am not an 'X Factor' fan, and I just think it is a different show. One is about learning something new and having a great time, and the other is rather desperate.

I wouldn't trade anything for family time. To me, it is more important than everything else, and I have a very deep-rooted belief in it, which is influenced by my Jewish faith. That's a very great source of who I am and what I believe in.

Every woman feels she is too old and has missed the boat.

I hope to start enjoying flirting again when I'm 70, like my mother did.

It was in India that I started my acting career, courtesy of my parents, long before I set foot on stage in England. They headed a company of travelling players performing Shakespeare up and down the land.

From the early days of the Raj, Shakespeare had been woven into the fabric of India's education, and my father understood that in a culture rich with storytelling and fantastical tales, Shakespeare's characters and storylines resonated in a powerful way.

I think in the acting world you either manage that transition to older roles, or you stick with what you've always done and then discover nobody can bear you doing it as an older person.

I'm not very much of a foodie; I like small amounts of delicious things, but I've never overeaten - I'd much rather have a glass of wine.

I don't treasure things much - just people. And pets.

There is one sure way of telling when politicians aren't telling the truth - their lips move.

As we have more women in power, so the plays and the TV dramas are reflecting what's happening.

The gym is where I get my chill-out time. I try to go six days a week, but when I'm working, that goes down to about three.

I don't think, until you've actually lost somebody you really love, that you can go through that door that allows you to be grown-up.

I can be very difficult if people are not professional, or lazy - or the opposite, which is take themselves too seriously.

In a play, the director is God, and I'm a great arguer. Rather boringly so, I think, about trying different things.

I don't take money seriously, so I can't keep any.

I'm sure people in the business have said: She's too old for that part. I don't hear about it because your agent protects you from those negative things.

I do still get the odd fan letter about The Good Life, clearly written by somebody aged 18, who says: Will you send a photograph? And I think: Maybe it's kinder not to. I'm deeply into my 50s now.

When I was much younger, I sometimes felt rejected by feminists because of an image that I sold because it paid the bills. Any fool could tell my hair is dyed.

I think you have to relax about aging. What else can you do?

There is the most wonderful thing called Polaris: it's a very high frequency laser treatment that lifts and tightens the skin.

The girl-next-door image is a sort of joke; for years, I couldnt get any roles other than as somebody dark.