Comedy - particularly the frothy and frivolous - is notoriously neglected by festivals and awards. But it's bloody hard to get right.

And that is a hard route for a woman to come through. There's still a lot of roles that have to be conformed to. It's quite an old fashioned environment in a lot of ways.

I had heard all sorts of stories about Woody Allen's directing - directorial approach. And some of them turned out to be myth. But, one of them was that he doesn't rehearse and another was that he doesn't really direct, if he doesn't like it...he cuts it out of the movie, or even replaces you.

I think the dictator director is based upon stories from the past. I don't think anyone would put up with it now. There are a lot of people on a film set with egos. So, to be completely authoritarian, you'd probably have to have a reputation like Kurosowa or somebody to get away with it.

As much as the next person, I want to be approved of, but I'm not greedy for that stuff.

I absolutely don't care about my looks and I'm so used to them that I wouldn't change a thing. I would end up missing my defects.

I'm fully aware that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: `Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars.