Parenting & Family Quote by Imelda Staunton

Staunton isn’t romanticizing motherhood so much as describing it as a useful psychic rewire. “Strong” and “chutzpah” land like backstage terms: not the saintly glow of parenting, but the practical nerve it takes to walk into a room and be judged for a living. The surprise is the second move: having a child “relaxed” her attitude to the job. For an actor, relaxation isn’t laziness; it’s oxygen. It’s what lets risk and play replace the clenched self-monitoring that can turn performance into self-protection.

The subtext is an indictment of the profession’s default setting: constant self-surveillance. Staunton gives it a blunt moral frame - “not particularly healthy” - without melodrama, because she knows the trap intimately. Acting requires you to mine your own body, memories, and face; the industry rewards those who can keep their inner weather report running 24/7. Her line about “even if you’re not a very indulgent actor” is a small, sharp concession: even the disciplined, un-narcissistic worker can’t escape a job built on self-focus.

Context matters here. Staunton is a veteran of stage and screen, a performer often praised for precision over vanity. When she credits parenting with shifting her “center of focus,” she’s also making a case for longevity: the ability to treat the work as important but not total. The chutzpah, then, isn’t just confidence; it’s proportion. A child becomes an external reality that punctures the industry’s hall of mirrors, and that puncture reads as freedom.