I think often women can feel isolated and feel like they get into a rut and don't quite know how to get out of it.

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.

I'm incredibly lucky that my profession allows me to be where I choose, really.

Theater is all about foyers and conversation and digesting what you've seen.

Well, I've never looked upon myself as being a beauty, per se.

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!

I think the downside of the Internet is that speaking-or writing-has become the point in and of itself.