I don't listen to so much music now. I did when I was younger. Music is so much part of my work. I like peace and quiet now when I go home.

My dad always told me that perseverance furthers. He was right.

One was never taught how to begin at drama school. But all it required was one intake of breath.

If you're a serious actor, you wouldn't put yourself up for one of those shows in case you got bumped off the first week and all your colleagues saw it.

Oh, it was awful, and I vowed to myself I would never, ever push myself to the edge that much again. It was really frightening. Because absolutely everything seemed to be impossible to deal with, just little things became major - noise, if someone had a radio on, or even the sound of traffic, or being in someone's company for longer than 10 minutes - I started to find it all too much.

I have been extremely pleased to support the Trust's work in the Lupus Unit ever since. Personal experience also motivated me to become involved to help raise the awareness of the disease and hopefully thereby improve the speed of diagnosis.

I've never been very good at manipulating my career, but fortunately I haven't needed to.