It's not funny at all that we do all that advertising for children. Why is advertising for children allowed? What possible reason can there be for having those effing adverts on TV for all this crap that's made by poor people in poor countries that we sell our children who have too much?

A lot of people in my world - in the acting world - have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community.

If you're actually allowing your creative part to control your writing rather than a more commercial instinct or motive, then you'll find that all sorts of interesting things will bubble up to the surface.

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

Constantly worrying about your reflection and criticizing your body, shape and size is an act of violence against yourself.

I think my first bout of that was when I was doing me and My Girl, funnily enough. I really didn't change my clothes or answer the phone, but went into the theatre every night and was cheerful and sang the Lambeth Walk. She said: “The only thing I could do was write. I used to crawl from the bedroom to the computer and just sit and write, and then I was alright, because I was not present. “Sense and Sensibility really saved me from going under, I think, in a very nasty way.

I don't have technique because I never learnt any.