When people said schooldays were the best days of your life, I remember thinking: 'Tell me it's not true. This cannot be it.' I don't think my life has ever been that bad again. It hasn't always been easy but at least I have been free.

I went for endless auditions for tiny parts in obscure plays, and never got one job until I was in 'Four Weddings'.

I can cook to please people, but it's quite conventional. I make a good sponge cake. I find it hard to follow recipes.

I find running life quite hard and I like sharing that. Obviously, the companionship, being loved and loving, is fantastic. But I don't feel that I couldn't live without a boyfriend or lover or husband.

Some people in my family achieved a lot, some people inherited a lot. But I turned my back on the whole thing.

I do try and curb my mouth, but I find it really hard. I wonder how many jobs I've talked myself out of!

In the theatre, if you say 'Macbeth', all the actors will start looking very anxious. I'm so well-trained not to say it in the theatre that I can hardly say it in normal life.