June Brown Quotes

Sometimes I wonder if I loved anybody, and yet I think of all the tears I shed and the heartache. It was all such a waste of time.

I’m not bragging but I used to be rather beautiful, with lovely legs, and people would always ask me to dance. But suddenly people didn’t take any notice of me any more. I was at a party in my 50s and was forced to dance with a chair because nobody wanted to dance with me.

I say sorry for everything.

I always felt Dot was one of those characters who should stay the same. She’s a simple creature.

In fact I became so punctual I used to be in an hour before I should be.

I am never going to be made a Dame doing Dot.

I don’t like spending money.

I can’t afford to retire.

I’ve known great happiness.

I didn’t want my book to be soapy – maybe it’s my vanity but I think I can write better than that.

It’s much easier for me to cry and do all those things on the stage than in real life.

I never wanted to be an actress. I wanted to go into the medical professional. Acting was not important enough. That was a hobby – nothing to do with what you did in life.

The elderly in Britain aren’t really given enough respect.

There are some people who the same things happen to them again and again. They never learn.

My sister happened to look at The Times, and there was advertised the Old Vic theatre school. I wrote, I suppose, and got an audition. They said I was in, so I burst into tears, because in those days I cried when I was happy and I cried when I was sad.

At 16 I was very interested in palmistry. The fate line on my right palm broke into two parts that ran for a quarter of an inch on parallel tracks. I used to look at it and wonder, ‘What will happen?’

If I’d stayed at home I’d have married as a virgin. But, in the heady post-war years, I fell in love all the time.

I like silence.

Sometimes I’ll feel down and realise it’s because of a depressing plot.

I used to take the children to work with me.

It’s a dreadful thing to be strapped for cash when you are elderly. It’s awful when you’re young, too, but you always have hope.

I felt an intense loneliness after my sister died. I was seven at the time, she was eight, and I realised after her death that she accepted me for who I was.

I never touch fast food.

Just pray for your health and strength, hearing and eyesight, and an active mind.

No, I wouldn’t vote Labour, dear, if you paid me. I vote Conservative.

I got a grant for the Old Vic Theatre School in London, which had just started. It was only five terms; they used to break you down and never quite put you together again but it was an excellent training.

If your sight is poor, there’s very little you can do.

Personally my mind needs occupying. If it isn’t, it goes all over the place.

I miss Bob, but I don’t want another marriage.

I’m a perfectionist – but as someone once said, ‘What else is there to be?’

My life is just – logistics – fitting everything in.

I’ve had two pensions each that have gone down by 50%.

I was a procrastinator and a bookworm but I passed all my School Certificate exams, the equivalent of O-levels; I got three distinctions, three honours and three good passes.

I don’t want to live to be 100.

I wish it were September 1948 and I wish I were 21 again.

I’ve never entertained the idea of retiring because I’ve never regarded myself as having a proper job. Anyway, retirement can be the death of you.

An actor needs his voice.

You’ve got to laugh in the face of disappointment.

I didn’t know much about the East End and I didn’t go trudging round to research it – couldn’t be bothered with all that – but my grandmother was a cockney so I used her voice for Dot. I don’t think it sounded very real at the beginning.

I was always taught to say thank you for everything, good or bad.

I was taught at my drama school that it’s not what you feel, it’s what you make the audience feel.

I can see where everything is around the house but nothing’s clear.

The Old Vic is special to me because that’s where I began. I lived in New Bond Street in London in a flat that cost 4.20 a week. I split the rent with friends. We used to go to concerts, theatres, we went to the Proms.

When you’re acting you are in love with someone, it’s very hard not to think you are.

I can’t go out socially. I never go to soap awards now. I don’t recognize people I know and they would think that I was snubbing them.

I would not like to go into a care home. That’s my worst fear. I like my own home and would like to die here.

I’ve had tragedy in my life, but I think that gives me a depth that I can bring to my work. I’d like to see more older women on TV because they can bring that life experience and emotion to a performance.

My thirties were ruined by being pregnant. I loved my babies but I had been quite successful before I had them, playing Lady Macbeth and Hedda Gabler, one of my favourite roles.

I’ve got very poor sight.

I’ve played two people simultaneously for 35 years.

Don’t like makeup. I don’t use it much unless I go out – I think it makes you look older.

I’m always doing that, going off at a tangent.

When I was 17-and-a-half I volunteered for the Wrens. I auditioned for a play and we took it round the Southern Command area and I really enjoyed it. I got laughs and that was when the bug got me.

I’ve always been afraid of being poor when I’m old.

I don’t want to be a burden to anyone.

Acting is a very strange thing. It isn’t about trying to feel, for me, it is about thinking.

Characters can get under your skin when you play them for a long time.

I am very bossy.

I’ve got extra lenses inside my eyes to try to help me read better. They help with peripheral vision, but I’ve got no central vision.

I find when I get on set that my energy comes.

I’m absolutely pedantic about language; it must go back to my schools.

You’ve always got to have something to say, haven‘t you? For an interview. Something to talk about.

I can play CDs and I can use an ordinary mobile.

In 1930, when I was three and my sister was four, my father sent us to Miss Tracy’s, a little ‘dame‘s school’ in Ipswich. I do remember playing with an abacus. He took us away after a term because he thought we weren’t learning anything.

I wasn’t a natural mother.

Old people are considered worthless fuddy-duddies and often overlooked, which makes them sink into loneliness. I noticed it as soon as I started to age.