If you build a career on being a beautiful young woman, that's going to be a short career. I have to establish I can act. I don't want to have to visit the plastic surgeon every two years.

I don't like posh hotels. I like small, eclectic hotels, and luxury for me would mean really good company with good food in a really funky, beautiful house in the middle of a field where someone came and serviced the place for us.

If you build a career on being a beautiful young woman, that's going to be a short career. I have to establish I can act. I don't want to have to visit the plastic surgeon every two years.

My father worked for the Foreign Office, so he was away a lot of the time. We were a very volatile family. There was a lot of love and a lot of conflict. The conflict kicked in mostly during my adolescence.

I loved living in Hollywood - and the weather there was just fantastic - but there is something about rural England, and especially Suffolk and Norfolk, that pulls at my heartstrings.

Soaps are one of the few areas on TV that really embrace older women. In drama, there's this ridiculous invisibility for women between the ages of 40 and 60. Unless you're old enough to play a grandmother, there just aren't the roles.

Ive always loved my red wine, and when Im not working I can open a bottle too many. I love to cook, so its one for me and one for the casserole. I would consume a bottle of wine on my own of an evening and then literally pass out.