Lindsay Doran goes round the table and introduces everyone - making it clear that I am present in the capacity of writer rather than actress, therefore no one has to be too nice to me.

The only way you can have it all is by delegating all the running of the home to other people - which I don't ever want to do... So you do it yourself, and it takes time and energy and effort. And if you give it the time, it's profoundly enjoyable.

We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power.

Film is so much to do with perfection and how differently you can feel about someone at the beginning of the film and the end of the film.

Girlfriends are vital ... Maggie [Gyllenhaal] and I will always see each other when Maggie's in London or I'm here. We'll always make time to sit and catch up properly.

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.

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.