The thing I love about acting is that you can bring something very personal into the open and at the same time remain hidden because you're always playing a character in a story that someone else has imagined. You're always protected.

The thing I love about acting is that you can bring something very personal into the open and at the same time remain hidden because you're always playing a character in a story that someone else has imagined. You're always protected.

I was quite a shy child – not chronically, but I tended to blend into the background.

The most amazing thing is when you find yourself watching someone in the café or something doing something weird. It's amazing what people do, isn't it, when you just look at them, when you take the time to look.

What I notice about people who are gifted in filmmaking is that they're great thinkers. They engage with big ideas and they engage with people.

I would have loved to have been a painter or a sculptor. I'm still fascinated by those things.

Even today, England is a very repressed, repressive country, and there's pressure to be kind of a certain way, so people do things that ultimately make them sad.