If you know you are going to fail, then fail gloriously.

It was fantastic to be able to have my kids on set. Dash, my eldest son, who’s not quite five, was into knights and his godmother had given him a plastic Marks & Spencer knights’ outfit and [first assistant director] Tommy Gormley said that he could stand to protect me during the scene where Clive [Owen] is talking about the immensity of sitting on the throne. I’m actually looking through an archway at my son standing in his knights’ costume protecting me!

Marriage is a risk; I think it's a great and glorious risk, as long as you embark on the adventure in the same spirit.

If you think about Audrey Hepburn, I think she became more beautiful when she stopped being an actress and started working with humanitarian campaigns. The more engaged you can become the more you can shed your self-consciousness.

Personally, I prefer to play against the look: If a character appears particularly unhinged, with makeup running down her face, I like to play her as if she has it together. I think that juxtaposition makes it so much more interesting.

You have to surrender less when you see a film than when you go and see something live.

It's important to travel and move and have a continual set of experiences so you've got more to feed back into your work. For me, it's a natural thing.