As a child, I always chose a false nose and some face paint and a wig for my birthday.

My mum Margaret was a single parent, but though life was a bit of a struggle she gave me every encouragement.

I've reached a point in my life where going to the supermarket is a day out.

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.

Well, I'd never done an animated movie before, which is why I was so excited about doing it. It was one of the little boxes as an actor that I wanted to tick off. I wanted to do an animated film. So, after my mum got over the fact that I was never going to play Shrek's sister, this was the nearest I was going to get!

Life's too short to worry about injecting botulism into your face to get rid of a tiny line because you've laughed too much. To me, that's a bit warped.

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.