London has always been a haven for victims of cruelty, and been improved by them. Yet I can see it changing now. Outsiders are demonised, there are little bits of legislation, people are scared.

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.

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.

Children are the most wonderful audiences. What's struck me most is that that they watch it so silently, until the end when they shriek and shout and clap.

The insanity of consumption bothers me. Talk about the opiate of the masses. It ain't religion anymore. It's stuff.

I think we're creating a situation that's incredibly dangerous. There's a lot of chat at the moment about the war on terror and whilst there are many causes for acts of terrorism, what kind of society are you creating if you allow civil society in Africa to die and create millions upon millions of orphans? Where are they going to go? What kind of cults, what kind of militias, what's going to happen? The accession of violence in those countries, the possibility of that, to me is very terrifying.

I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter, and able to give people a clean drink of water. I don't want images of starving babies at the breast in my mind. I want that to change. And if I want that, I had better do something about it.