Im mad keen on recycling because Im worried about the next generation and where all this waste were producing is going. It has to stop. I wash out my plastic containers and recycle envelopes, everything I possibly can.

With age comes a greater wisdom, an ease and comfort with oneself.

I have done so many love scenes in the past that I have learned how to pull off a sexy smoulder on the dance floor.

I grew up in a very political household. My mum used to shout at the television. At Mrs. Thatcher.

I wear my lines like a soldier wears his medals. They've been earned. They've been fought for - so there's no reason to be ashamed of them. In your 50s, you just care less about that sort of thing. I think it's to do with what's inside you. You can't obsess about the outside.

Be yourself - it's the inner beauty that counts. You are your own best friend, the key to your own happiness, and as soon as you understand that - and it takes a few heartbreaks - you can be happy.

At the beginning of my acting career, I worked for two seasons at the RSC and spent a lot of time in the Cotswolds exploring Shakespeare's countryside. It's my kind of English landscape, with its tiny villages and one-room thatched pubs.