Tracey Ullman Quotes

Everybody's [in Berlin] gay!

I love John Waters. There's stuff in it that's beyond the boundaries of my taste, but his movies have always been like that.

I based my career from the very beginning on people like Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Margaret Rutherford. I keep thinking Maggie and Judi are going to eventually not want those parts and I’m going to move up and take them (laughter). So, hopefully, I’ll be working in my 70s and 80s. You know, character actresses. I never had looks to lose. I could keep going—Meryl Streep and me.

I hated the pressure that many of the children were under. Many of the kids were forced to grow up too fast, their careers were being decided for them before they were 13. If I went to an audition then they'd always choose the sweetest, prettiest kid. I wasn't obviously beautiful so I used to miss out." Ullman has also alleged that the owners taught their own children and that a certain level of favouritism seemed to exist. She also felt that the education she was receiving was of very little value. "These stupid teachers would come in and go, 'Good morning, darlings, lets all be dustbins!' I'd go, 'Oh, shut up! I wanna be a banana!'

What I fear most is that you will know where the laughs are going to come, or that you will know a character so well that you know when they're going to sing a song. In some shows, you just know that the audience is sitting there going "Oh no, she's going to sing."

Every seven years or so I look around me and I want to look at the society and I want to try and be everyone I'm seeing in the world right now. [...] And I've done this all my life. I realized I used to do this in my mother's bedroom when I was 6. I used to be everyone in my village and everyone at school and everyone in the news, and I'm still doing that same show. I'm now 56. I think I can do it in my 80s. I'll just, you know, impersonate everyone around me then in the nursing home.

Hollywood to me, I never get the real glamour and romance. I look at an old picture of Veronica Lake, you know, looking glamorous, and I just look at her and think, "Maybe she had her period that day."

In 1976 I was sweet 16. Well, I was never sweet, but I was 16.

The BBC said the only thing they didn’t like about the show was those weird little animated characters and suggested maybe they could get rid of them because they would never catch on.

I was never a child. I was always a menopausal woman within a child's body.

I left school at 16 and went to Berlin and danced [...] West Berlin, 1976. It was amazing. I wish they hadn't taken the wall down. Now it's full of east Germans wearing Versace shirts.

Every character I do is based on someone I know. I try to justify every sketch we do. If it's not working, we find someone to talk to who it has happened to.

I'm as famous as I want to be.

Oh, yeah, she's that snippy little Brit girl who takes all the parts so no one else gets a crack at it.

I thought, is this what it's all about? Do you have to be blonde and girly and have freckles and a snub-nose and sort of act the coquette in show business? WELL YES!