What she said - We celebrate International Women's Day with words from our favourite interviews
Celebrate International Women’s Day with our quotes from interviews with some of our favourite females
To celebrate International Women’s Day we’ve rounded up our favourite quotes from some of the top women I’ve interviewed over the years to inspire and entertain you.
From the world of arts, entertainment, books and business, these talented women have a wealth of experience and expertise in their chosen fields and some wise words to share on what it means to succeed at work and life.
NATALIE PORTMAN, ACTOR
I think we’re so lucky to have the attention on us as actors and to use some of that for people who are doing really wonderful things to improve our world. It’s part of the responsibility of having a spotlight.
JUDY MURRAY, TENNIS COACH AND AUTHOR
ON HER SON’S REACTION TO WHAT SHE DOES.
They sort of roll their eyes whenever I do something a little bit different, but they’re always incredibly supportive. I think they’re protective, or worried in case anything goes wrong… They’re constantly raising their eyebrows at me - ‘what are you doing now?’
ON THE PRESS
When we started out it was incredibly misogynistic because I was that unusual dynamic of mother of sons and a competitive mother and they painted me as uberpushy parent and I was like, ‘wow, you know, anybody who has a child in an individual sport knows the onus is on parents to make things happen’… often parents get a bad rep just for being there and asking questions and trying.
DEBBIE HARRY, SINGER
ON BEING ASKED ABOUT THE ADVANTAGES OF GETTING OLD.
Take that back bitch! I guess you can take things more with a grain of salt.
ON WHAT PIECE OF MUSIC WOULD SUM UP HER RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIS STEIN
I guess something from Chopin. Anything that’s as confusing as possible.
Stein: I’d say something from Napalm Death. Or from Social Distortion.
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SHARLEEN SPITERI, MUSICIAN
ON WHAT SHE KNOWS NOW THAT SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHEN SHE WAS 17.
I know now that I know nothing. That is the truth. I thought I knew everything when I was 17 and I now know that I know nothing.
ON STAYING POSITIVE AND WORKING HARD
I get bored with people’s attitudes sometimes, though. I’m like oh, f*** off and put a smile on your face. Some people could look at that and say yeah, that’s easy for you to say but you know what, it’s what you make of things. I didnae just come into this and start at this end of it. I worked my bollocks off for a long, long time. And probably work even harder now…
MARGARET ATWOOD, AUTHOR
ON EDINBURGH
We love Edinburgh, were here for a year, and still have pals here. I remember taking Jess, who was about two, into Jenners to see Santa. We found him having a fag. My daughter asked him for a goat. No, she didn’t get one!
ON STORIES
Storytelling is a very old human skill that gives us an evolutionary advantage. If you can tell young people how you kill an emu, acted out in song or dance, or that Uncle George was eaten by a croc over there, don’t go there to swim, then those young people don’t have to find out by trial and error. Primate mothers show their young, do this, don’t do that, though they don’t have the gift of narrative, and the most attentive ones raise better equipped young.
ALISON O’DONNELL, ACTOR
ON SHETLAND
It’s not home, but I feel homesick for it. Quite often at the weekend I’ll be sitting and think ‘ah, I would just like to walk down to the book shop, wander round that gift shop, just be next to the sea on the beautiful beaches and breathe the sea air. It has got into me. It’s a sense memory. I feel really lucky with that
DUA LIPA, SINGER
ON GLASGOW
We were there on tour and I had such a great night out afterwards. We went to Nice N Sleazy’s and finished off the night on the street corner eating deep fried Mars Bars, so we had the full Glasgow experience.
ON THE WEB
We need to share the idea of be kind, be more supportive of each other, be encouraging of what others are doing and have courtesy. I think as long as we try and promote kindness it will be OK.
DITA VON TEESE, BURLESQUE ARTIST, MODEL, ACTRESS, BUSINESSWOMAN
ON CHANGING HER NAME FROM HEATHER SWEET.
I chose an alternative name when I started because it was what people did and it seemed very Hollywood…. Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, they had their given name then their chosen name. But Heather Sweet would work as a stripper name as well.
ON BUYING TARTAN IN SCOTLAND
From my mom’s family name [GROAT] the store came up with Mackenzie as the nearest thing, so I bought a tartan plaid yardage and had a beautiful dress made.
ON THE POLITICS OF STRIPPING. IS IT EMPOWERING OR OBJECTIFYING?
We’re all going to have different ideas of what makes a show empowering or degrading so I think the real definition of feminism is to have a choice and to have as many opportunities as men… You can’t say it’s anti-feminist, because there’s an audience that’s predominantly female. Women don’t have to apologise for our sexuality any more, it’s a different time. I’m a lady boss making my own decisions.
KT TUNSTALL, MUSICIAN
I didn’t get my record deal till I was 29. It had been my entire twenties, a good ten years trying to get somewhere, then when it did happen, yeah it was overnight, Jools Holland changed everything.
ON BEGGING HER PARENTS FOR A PIANO WHEN SHE WAS FOUR
They said can you not play something smaller? But they got me one anyway and I was a mini Mozart for the first year, then it was a slow downward trajectory until I was 15 and picked up a guitar. I taught myself and no-one was telling me how to do it, which I liked.
ROSE MCGOWAN, ACTOR, AUTHOR, #ME TOO CAMPAIGNER
ON MISOGYNY IN HOLLYWOOD AND #ME TOO
I’ve always had a thing for justice… I just don’t like seeing misjustice and I certainly don’t like predators… I felt an obligation to be a voice for women, people who had suffered from violence.
ON SHAVING OFF HER LONG HAIR
I thought I looked more like a blow-up sex doll… I had been turned into the ultimate fantasy f*** toy by the Hollywood machine. I was dying on the inside and embarrassed by what I looked like on the outside… Film and television is a white male’s playground and through their narrow vision comes the manipulated mirror you’re largely forced to see yourself in. If that’s not malewashing I don’t know what is.
ON GROWING UP IN A CULT
When I came out of the Children of God everybody was saying how weird it was, how I lived and grew up, and I just thought ‘well, it’s weird how you live, you’re living under the same kind of dictates, you’re just not aware of it’... I thought ‘if you think you’re free, you’re not’. I was really shocked to find how the same belief systems being utilised, but a more internalised version.
IZUKA HOYLE, ACTOR
ON PLAYING A CHEF IN BOILING POINT AND BEING AN AVID COOK
It’s Izuka cooking, not Michelin-starred stuff. Although my cooking skills have got a lot better. Camille is on the garnish, cold section so I might make her starter, but I think my friends would find it incredibly pretentious. They’d be like ‘what’s this? Salmon and mint and some weird coleslaw? Keep it simple hen, and crack on with the main.
ON BEING ASKED TO WORK AS A SPY
While I was a student I was working at the airport in immigration as an interpreter and the undercover CIA and FBI agents got to know me and asked if I was interested. Of course I was super interested, but my mother had the biggest conniption known to mankind. She guilted me by saying ‘how could you do this to me?’... So I thought she had been tortured enough… But I freak my family out saying ‘you really don’t know if I actually joined, do you? This would be the perfect cover, right?’
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LORRAINE KELLY, JOURNALIST, AUTHOR, PRESENTER
ON THE BEST ADVICE
My granny always told me not to leave anything for “best”. Wear the frock and spray on the perfume and seize the day.
ON BEING HONEST ABOUT AGEING.
Well everybody that went to school with you knows what age you are. So why would you lie? It’s daft.
We’ve all got layers, different things going on in our lives. We all show what we want to show to the world but there’s an awful lot going on underneath.
JOANNA SCANLAN, ACTOR
ON NOT TURNING PROFESSIONAL AS AN ACTRESS UNTIL SHE WAS 34
I just couldn't get in to the profession. I didn’t arrive as an ingénue and was never going to be that, casting bracket-wise, in my twenties. I needed to catch up with my own natural setpoint casting age.
It’s almost embarrassing to admit, but every day as a woman I get up and think, what's the MINIMUM I can get away with in terms of like presentability and feminine attractiveness!
CANDACE BUSHNELL, AUTHOR AND ACTOR
ON SEX AND THE CITY
A lot of things that happened in the show happened in my real life. But they’re either better or worse than the show.
ON SEIZING THE DAY
My advice is don’t put off doing anything you want to do in life waiting for a partner. You just have to make your own life, knowing that maybe you’re going to be single, maybe you will be with somebody for a while, but you have to be nimble about being able to be in those situations. So much of what happens to you is going to really depend on what cards you’ve been dealt in life and the trick is to do the best you can with the cards you’ve been dealt.
ON STARTING IN TV AND RADIO
Back then it was really hard because there were no black or brown people on TV, but at least now there are cultural reference points. You think ‘hang on a minute, I’m not going to put up with that, and people who look like me are also visible so I’m not going to be shut up’.
ON RACISM
Racism in its purest form, discriminating against someone because of their race, the colour of their skin, is mad. I mean it’s always been mad and it remains mad.
JULIETTE BINOCHE, ACTOR
ON WHY SHE POSED NAKED FOR PLAYBOY IN 2007.
I don’t know. … they put me in front of a challenge. I did the interview first and liked it, then they said if you’re not doing the nude pictures we are not going to publish the interview… so I asked a photographer friend to take the pictures. I was doing a dancing show at the time, so we took pictures of me dancing nude. We enjoyed it and had a good time, and I liked the pictures. We are born naked…
ON NEVER GETTING MARRIED
I almost did, several times, but it never really happened. I’m very romantic, and probably because I’m too romantic, but also… I think I overcame the need, because you’re attached to an idea and a feeling as well. I tend to think that the real wedding you have to do within yourself, between the masculine and the feminine inside yourself.
DR PUNAM KRISHAN, GP AND STRICTLY CONTESTANT
ON STRICTLY, BEHIND THE SCENES
This army of people run out, some hoiking off the old set and others pulling on a brand new one. And for sprinkles, sparkles, sequins, anything that’s been showered onto the dancefloor, huge vacuums come down from above and suck it all away.
ON WHAT IT MEANT TO DIO A BOLLYWOOD NUMBER ON STRICTLY
Growing up I never imagined seeing a Bollywood song, especially a classic Bollywood song, on mainstream telly. If we wanted to watch Indian films or listen to Indian music it was always on the Indian TV channels. Growing up in Glasgow as a first generation, you really want that sense of feeling like you belong. If you are from two mixed cultures it was a really special moment being able to represent that side of my culture…
Coming back from Strictly, my job as a GP gave me huge doses of perspective about what truly matters. When you’re beating yourself up because you didn’t do as well as you hoped in a dance, you know people have got bigger battles going on.
ASHLEY JENSEN, ACTOR
ON LIFE AND WORK
For me life’s too short to be having a miserable time or stressing about ego. I just want to get on with everyone and for everybody else to have a nice time as well.
ON MEETING DAVID BOWIE ON EXTRAS
I remember I went up to him and asked him for his autograph and he said ‘this is for your mum, isn’t it?’ and it kind of was for my mum and he was like ‘oh, I knew it, I knew it’.
ON ADVICE
My granny used to say ‘what’s for ye will no go by ye’ and I carried that around with me for a while but then I thought ‘well, I agree with that to an extent, but you’ve got to put in a wee bit of effort yourself.
GAIL PORTER, TV PERSONALITY, FORMER MODEL AND ACTRESS
ON SHARING HER STRUGGLES
When things started to go wrong I thought I have a really great platform to say, ‘do you know what? It could happen to anybody’, to share that… I said ‘there might be people out there who have alopecia or are going through chemotherapy and are embarrassed, so I want to be that person that goes, ‘yeah, I’ve got it, let’s just talk about it.’ I decided to be that open about everything. Why not?
DENISE MINA, AUTHOR
ON BECOMING A WRITER
I just thought that was like wanting to be a pop star. I saw writers as men, very confident, very posh, they’d read everything and were authoritative, and wore capes. It’s not like that now, but in those days you didn't see women writers, and you didn't see people who were a bit shy. It just seemed like a big thing to be and I thought ‘oh nobody's gonna be interested in what I've got to say.’
ON WRITING HER HISTORICAL NOVEL, RIZZIO
I've seen a lot of fictional representations of Scottish history, and it's just all men. And, you know, that's really not what happens, but that’s what we’re told. There are equally heroic stories of women with the same trajectory, and interesting tales of escape and survival.
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