I love character roles. I'm happier in them. I look for roles that have some kind of complexity.

People quit on jobs. They quit on marriages. They quit on school. There's an immediacy of this day and age that doesn't lend itself to being committed to anything.

If you can capture the humanity of a family struggling in an economic crisis you can make a difference. You can raise awareness just of the simple humanity.

I had a non-existent knowledge of Queen Victoria's early years. Like everyone else, I thought of her as an old lady dressed in black. My mom had told me about her, though, that she had a very loving relationship with Albert, that they had lots of kids, and that he died young.

I think I'm drawn to characters with complexity or who are under duress in some way and have some conflict going on.

I think a lot of people want to, at some point in their life, be someone else, run away and escape, in some way. We actors do get to do it. We have a job that allows for that. We have an outlet for it.

The performances I enjoy are the ones that are hard to read or ambiguous or left-of-centre because it makes you look closer and that's what humans are like - quite mysterious creatures, hard to pinpoint.