My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they're beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.

51st State was one that I loved doing because the character was so out there, and in a way I was sad to leave the character behind. I'm afraid I could never be that cool in real life!

I was determined not to become an American citizen but I did it for completely cynical reasons: to avoid paying inheritance tax in the U.S.

My dad had this philosophy that if you tell children they're beautiful and wonderful then they believe it, and they will be. So I never thought I was unattractive. But I was never one of the girls at school who had lots of boyfriends.

The ratings thing is the real issue. It really hurts movies. For example, in Redbelt, I smoked. The whole plot of my character was based on the fact that I was a smoker. And then they discovered that just by having someone smoking in the movie, it immediately makes the rating an R. So they had to cut out every shot where I had a cigarette in my hand and it totally affected the performance. That was very frustrating to David Mamet as well. I can remember him saying, "It's a nightmare."

I thought a parent's job was to tell their children not to go into acting as a profession!

There's a whole world of bad TV that's along similar themes - the cop drama.