I love women but am aware we're dangerous and deeply competitive, although I gave up being competitive long ago.

It's a question of economics. If you're paid the same as a man, which now you are in this profession, you're equal.

If a man holds a door open for me or pulls back a chair so that this old bag can sit down, I'm delighted.

When my marriage broke up, I went to three separate therapists, and each was worse than the last. I can only speak for myself. There are other people it's been incredibly useful for, but not me.

Many years ago, when I was working on Broadway, I used to go to a drug rehabilitation centre on Sundays. I didn't lecture them against the perils of drug-taking; I gave them drama therapy.

I regard bed as my best friend.

I confess I do a lot of the wrong things: I smoke, and I drink wine, and people might be horrified at my eating habits - I eat when I'm hungry, and if I'm not, I don't.

I step into a character in my public life. People who don't make that distinction are dooooomed.

Some of those early photographs of me might as well be sepia. It's always thought that I disclaim television and am too theatre, but the truth is 'The Avengers' bores me now. I was grateful because it catapulted me into stage stardom. It was good. I'm not ashamed of it. But I only did it for two years.

There is always one thing that turns you into an icon, an iconic image: in my case, a catsuit. But the icon 40 years later doesn't really want to know because it's not relevant to me.

All these old images of me floating across the screen, the terrible chasm of what you were and what you are. I know who I am, but these people who see me as I was then don't.

I'm really grateful for 'Game of Thrones'. It's something wonderful to happen to an actress of my age, and Dubrovnik is astonishingly beautiful.

We depend on the critics to give us a glimpse of what happened. Bernard Shaw championed Ibsen, who got the most terrible notices for his plays. Kenneth Tynan championed young writers, and as a result, the theatre has changed radically.

Critics have to sit through an awful lot of rubbish, and you feel really sorry for them. In fact, I've been in a play where I felt sorry for the critics.

I don't have it in for critics, and I never have.

It's a very powerful medium now, and should be celebrated as such, because we have the greatest television in the world.

When I started, TV was regarded as something that wasn't as great as film or theatre or radio, but it has proved to have far greater powers than those.

I wouldn't like to see a female Bond, because we wouldn't want to lose the Bond girls. But we could have a lesbian Bond - why not?

I think politicians misjudge our intelligence. We can, and do, see through them. But I quite enjoy watching political programmes because they get the heart going.

Working keeps me young. Anything that exercises the brain like learning lines.

There is a life after being at the pinnacle of your beauty. Plenty of life and fun.

I never relied on my beauty for anything. It was one of those things that was inevitable; you have a bit of philosophy about it. I didn't go into mourning.

'Game of Thrones' is wonderful. My theory is they employ all these British actors because, one, they are like me and grateful. Two, we turn up, and we know our lines. Three, we don't demand a 60 ft. Winnebago and PA, and four, largely we are very uncomplaining.

I didn't know what to do with the fan mail. I had a little mini, and I used to put it at the back of my mini, and it grew and grew.