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.

I've got an overactive, analytical brain. I get frustrated, impatient, angry with myself. I swear at myself a lot.

People ask me how I manage without a man in the same tone they might ask someone how they're doing with just one lung, but it's not like that at all.

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.

I've been a single parent for a long time. It reminds me of being a waitress. As you walk back to the kitchen, requests come at you from all sides. You're doing the job of two - you have to be highly organised.

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

Sadly, the timing's never been right. There have been men who would have married me but I didn't feel the same, and vice versa.