I have sleepless nights before press days.

I think you know what you're up against when you take on a piece that you know is going to involve dragging up a lot emotions - you can end up being deeply immersed in gloom.

Running gave me a focus to start looking after myself, to eat properly, and focus on building up my strength.

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.

But I didn't really enjoy my secondary education that much, probably because I am a very physical person and don't enjoy sitting at a desk all day. I just dragged myself through GCSE and A Levels, so it suited me very much to go on to drama school, which was very active.

I still love coming into work everyday after so many years working as an actress. I've been working more or less continuously and I find I have to really want to do the project to make it work because you have to put such an enormous amount of effort into it.

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