What I find interesting is this ricochet effect, that the audience perceives the work and then does something with it, throws it back to the world, and there's an ongoing interaction between work and audience, which doesn't belong to the artist anymore - from the moment you release it, it doesn't belong to anybody.

When you're a performer, of course you want an audience, but it's very, very different from courting fame.

Maybe this is my morality coming in again but it was important to me that the actor [ in Notes On A Scandal] was above the age of consent. Although really, what's the difference between 15 and 16? It's the law, yeah, but he's very mature.

I never really think about my gender, first and foremost - until a door is closed to you. Until you can see a parallel opportunity with a man in a similar place in his career and you think, That opportunity is not open to me or my fellow actresses. That's interesting.

I couldn't possibly have played someone with feelings towards a woman unless I had those feelings myself.

If I'm not good at acting, I'm not good at anything else.

You do get scrutinized in the digital age. You know they're zooming in on every pore, which you've got to forget about.