There's an awful lot of misunderstanding here about what being poor actually means. I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything. It is remarkable how many misconceptions there are here about life in the developing world and I think that that knowledge gap has done a lot to contribute to the imbalance quite frankly.

The trick is to age honestly and gracefully and make it look great, so that everyone looks forward to it.

Children are much more understanding of the suddenness and arbitrariness of death than we are. The old fairy tales contain a lot of that, and we've stolen from them, just as they stole from Greek myth, which has that same mixture of pre-Christian chaos.

I've never been on the cover of Empire. I'm very bitter. I've got an award but now I feel sad and cross.

This morning, I went to wipe my hands on a tea towel, and while I was using it, it seemed like it felt a bit light. I unfolded it and realized my daughter had cut little bits out of it to make frocks for her dolls!

It's such a cold night and it's the only time I've actively been grateful for menopause. I've been entirely comfortable.

We've got people looking at our seamy side and our sad side a lot of the time because that's easier. It's much more difficult to make a film about happiness with lots of jokes in it.