Elisabeth Sladen

Elisabeth Sladen: (About her Sarah Jane Adventures co-stars) K-9 is good when he's used properly but it's difficult to work with an inanimate object. I know Tom [Baker] used to kick him across the studio. So to have the children instead, real flesh and blood, is better. I was worried because you look at the age group and they could have been spawn of the devil. But they are such lovely children.

Elisabeth Sladen: (About the first day filming School Reunion) I just wanted to go in and do the work, I had so many flowers in the trailer I thought I'd died! It really was not very low key.

Elisabeth Sladen: Occasionally hoodies will come up and I think 'Oh God, I'm going to be mugged',but they're so nice to me! 'Hello, Sarah', they'll say. At Charing Cross Station the other week, I was just sitting there with my coffee waiting for a connection, and this guy didn't stop walking, he just came up and said 'god bless you, Sarah', and walked off! It's sort of non-intrusive and I'm sure it's not what the Doctors get at all, but it's always very sweet, I like it.

Elisabeth Sladen: It is science fiction, but really Doctor Who is about relationships. It's about being made to look a fool every week if you're the assistant:- "Yes Doctor, No Doctor, but... I will look a fool to help my friend and I don't care how stupid I look, because he needs help."

Elisabeth Sladen: (About The Five Doctors) It was wonderful for what it was and it's Doctor Who and you open a can of beans and what have you got? Nothing really, you've got froth. But somewhere in there you've got a programme about heroes and there's still something in there that captures hold of people today, so in one way we shouldn't dismiss it. You've got good, you've got evil and good wins. It should scare, but it's a good sort of scared and the blood is tomato sauce.

Elisabeth Sladen: I did three years at the Aylesbury theatre, but no one really knows that. Maybe two people saw me do Desdemona, maybe 1000's did, but they'll never remember it. But they'll remember a massive spider being lodged on your back.

Elisabeth Sladen: (about the reaction to the Sarah Jane Adventures) I was very worried that all the kids would just be into Grange Hill and really wouldn't care about some silly old lady running about! But where we film Sarah Jane's house in Cardiff, the local school bus now does a free tour going past the house and they all wave. The local Brownies walking past to say hello too, it's lovely.

Elisabeth Sladen: (about the dangers of conventions) One of the funniest things was being at a convention and we were turfed out of our hotel in Philadelphia. The guy who organized it wasn't paying the bill. So we had to relocate to the Holiday Inn and Jon Pertwee's wife Ingebourg was going, "Jon, Jon." Out come the funny pills - valium or something. And we'd started in the morning on Bloody Marys - the hospitality was wonderful. Anyway, between the two things I don't remember anything about that convention whatsoever - probably my best performance ever, I woke up in the shower at 3am. I had no idea what happened in Philadelphia.

Elisabeth Sladen: (about The Sarah Jane Adventures) We finished School Reunion in the autumn of 2005 and I didn't know until early January that they wanted to see me for something else. Initially I thought it was Torchwood. I thought 'ooh I'm going to get pass the nine o'clock zone', but t'was not to be - but I'm really, really pleased.

Elisabeth Sladen: (about working with Tom Baker) I didn't see Tom socially. I once met him on Regent Street, and he asked me to have a Guinness, but I think it freaked us both out – the Doctor and Sarah-Jane drinking on Regent Street! The relationship worked so well that we didn't want to spoil it.

Elisabeth Sladen: Sarah Jane used to be a bit of a cardboard cut-out. Each week it used to be, 'Yes Doctor, no Doctor', and you had to flesh your character out in your mind — because if you didn't, no one else would.