In Paris, I rent a bike in the street and cycle around, and in L.A. I live up in the hills so I go hiking a lot.

I come from a very small rural village in northern Germany, and being an actor never even seemed like a possibility. I thought you would have to live in a big city, or be discovered somewhere, or be born into an artistic family, which I certainly wasn't.

A well-cut dress is my personal style. I definitely like it classic; less is more. The thing I despise most is vulgarity.

You should be smart enough to know that you don't know everything. But you have to believe in yourself. I certainly do.

I know a lot of people think, 'She's so glamorous.' But that's really not me at all.

I really feel like the first day I went to drama school and I went up on stage, that I found my vocation. It's kind of a cliched thing to say but I really feel like it was what I was meant to do.

To me, acting is very therapeutic. I get out a lot of anger and frustration. It's maybe hard to believe, but as a kid I really had a lot of self-doubts. My father was very ill - he was an alcoholic - so there were a lot of things that built up for me. And because I was going to a Catholic school in a small German town, a lot of it was suppressed. I was angry and didn't know how to get it out.