If I want to run around a field when I'm 70, I would like to have that option.

I could suddenly see the pressures all around; these endless magazines and cheap reality TV programmes poking at women, humiliating us for every flaw. It makes me so angry. I really wonder what it is we are doing to ourselves, because I do think women can be the worst ones for picking each other apart.

I'd been gearing up to working in theatre since coming out of drama school, but it was an exciting time for TV drama - it was the birth of Channel 4, and Brookside was very cutting-edge at the time.

I was a complete tomboy. I loved wandering out in storms or walking on the beaches in the dark. It was a very free upbringing, and I'm grateful to my parents for that.

I have sleepless nights before press days.

It always interests me how obsessed people are about age.

I'm becoming more squeamish. I didn't use to be - nine years of 'Silent Witness' prepared me for most things one will have the misfortune to see in life. Before, I'd be wading up to my neck in gore, but now I tend to look away.