Top 25 Glenda Jackson Quotes

You don’t do a play to compete for an award. This was the argument I always had over the Oscars. I didn’t win them. They were given to me. All I did was 2 films. People always say the analogy is Olympic gold medals.

If a woman is successful, then she‘s deemed to be the exception that proves the rule. If a woman fails, well, we’re all failures. That kind of underlying approach to our gender doesn’t seem to me to have changed an iota.

My money goes to my agent, then to my accountant and from him to the tax man.

My life was transformed by the Labour government of 1945. It was transformative for millions of people like me, you know – education, the health service. It was proof that politics can make life better for people; that a social dream can become a social reality by the power of government.

My mother kept all my awards on the sideboard of her front room, and she polished them. She polished everything religiously. And it doesn’t take long for the very thin layer of gold to disappear and the base metal underneath to show through.

My fear with ‘Lear’ was that I would not have the physical or vocal strength. But this play, it’s all in your head. That was one of the really interesting things when we were rehearsing it: We were all exhausted because it was all up here.

You’ve got to sing like you don’t need the money.

The best theater is trying to tell the truth, and the best politics is trying to tell the truth.

I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.

No, I’m not recognized in London. What would people recognize?

My job is to see the world through the character‘s eyes.

The best teacher is an audience. The ideal performance is when that group of strangers sitting in the dark gets energy from the group in the light and sends energy back to us. When it really works, a perfect circle is formed.

No, I didn’t think of myself as an idealist. I consider myself as a believer in what I regard as the Labour Party‘s basic principles, which have to do with equality and ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. You know, the golden rules.

Why put make-up on when you only have to take it off again?

I have never believed you make your case stronger by bad-mouthing your opposition.

I’ve always been ambitious to be very good at what I do.

One hell of an outlay for a very small return, with most of them.

If I’m too strong for some people, that’s their problem.

Usually, if there is a woman’s part in a piece, there’s only one, so you’ve got no other actresses to work with.

I was blessed by my parents and my antecedents by a very strong work ethic. I mean, being a Member of Parliament is 24/7, just as much as when you’re actually doing a play. It’s not quite 24/7, but it’s the work that counts.

I find it extraordinary that contemporary dramatists don’t find women interesting. Women are rarely, if ever, the central dramatic engine; they’re there as an adjunct, and that hasn’t changed at all.

You can go onto that stage every night, and it’s always the equivalent of going onto the topmost diving board, and you don’t know if there’s any water in the pool.

I studiously avoid any academic dissections of the play and any kind of previous experience of playing. For me, it’s all in the play.

Our job is to unleash the play. It’s not just about your character or interaction with the other characters. There’s an energy in all good plays which you have to find. And that is part and parcel of ensuring that an audience gets what it’s about.

It always amazed me – it still does – that people offer me work. And when the theater was my basic bread and butter, every time a show finished, I was convinced I would never work again.