My husband is always telling me: 'We're on holiday - we don't need to have an itinerary!' But I always want to see as much as I can. Sometimes, I come back from holiday needing a holiday.

I'm thinking of Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music... there are too many to name really. And all the old classic ones like Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs and Bambi. That's brutal!

I always knew I wanted to be an actor, certainly from the age of eight or nine. I think when you know what you want to do, you're very lucky because you've got a focus.

We have a house in Umbria that we bought just before we went to America. That meant we couldn't go there as often as we thought, but now we're back, we're going to start using it more. I love the light, the countryside, the language and the fact that children are accepted everywhere. The Italians get passionate about everything, too.

I only do children's films now! I think when you go to LA some people feel you've defected a little bit and that's not really the case. Ideally, I would love to work here and to work in America. That's in an ideal world. In fact, I came back to Britain recently to do an ITV1 drama that will be out in April for a couple of months! But I'm flying back to LA to do a pilot season. So, to work in both places is great.

I don't even think places like the National Youth Theatre (NYT) are necessarily about wanting to be an actor when you grow up. They're about meeting people from different backgrounds and different religions and different cultures, and mixing with people that you wouldn't ordinarily meet.

I was in King Lear with Sir Tom Courtenay at The Royal Exchange in Manchester. In fact, that's where I met my husband. I was playing Regan and he was playing Cornwall and together we fell in love plucking out Gloucester's eyes. It was great fun. Everyone assumes that I was Cordelia because I've got blonde hair but I was Regan and they gave me a long auburn wig. It was great, good fun.