Diane Cilento (5 October 1933 – 6 October 2011) was an Australian theatre and film actress and author.
I didn't know what to do with myself. I wasn't excited by the teaching of the school. If they'd been intent on really teaching you things, I would have been a little more attentive.
At boarding school you had to wear your name across your chest and your back, and obviously I had a pretty funny name. It wasn't Brown or Smith or Hughes.
I never used to sleep much. I think we all go through a bit of a time like that where we rage about. If we don't, I don't think you've ever really lived.
The most surprising thing for my mother and father was when I was actually earning more money than them by the time I was about 18. They thought I was going to be the ne'er do well, who they'd have to keep worrying about.
Blank House was exactly a nice empty sheet where nothing was accountable because you were so naughty that you were in Blank House.
I spoke French a bit, and I could speak a bit of this and that, and when you were taught those things by people who couldn't really do it, you can do some pretty wonderfully, imaginative horrific things to teachers.
Any woman who marries an Italian must accept the undeniable fact that she has also married his mother.
It was a very odd household, because the grandmothers were so different. Both of them had their own pianos. So it would be duelling pianos by grandmothers.
I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it.
Very quickly, without really looking back or trying, I was just suddenly lifted into another sphere.
Wherever the wings of love take me, that is my flare path and my way.
Suddenly I had a contract and I was earning lots of money.
I learnt the theory of movement, which I still teach sometimes. I was very, very ambitious to learn a skill.
If you've got a lot of children, I think you let the other children bring them up more and you just sort of step in and do stuff like every now and again.
My mother felt it was time that I had some parental control, so I went off to America and went to New York.
I was a hard worker, and I always knew my lines.
I don't think in my family anyone looked after anyone. It didn't matter how old they were.
The best part of learning any profession, when you're really going through those huge stretching escalated times of learning and energy, is when you want to do it so much.
I got through my teen years by being a bit of a clown.
When I did Taming of the Shrew, I was very tired, and I decided to have a holiday and make a documentary.