The pressure on women to be thin is like a plague. I have gone through my life, like a lot of women, rating my experiences on the basis of, 'Was I thin at that time or fat?' And it doesn't seem to let up.

I know as actors our job is usually to shed our skins, but I think as people our job is to become who we really are and so I would like to salute the men and women who brave ostracism, alienation and a life lived on the margins to become who they really are.

On marriage: You sort of stumble along and reconnect and lose each other and reconnect again.

Beauty can make you powerful in a way that isn't good for you. Being OK is better for the person I have become.

Motherhood has been an exercise in guilt.

I look OK. I look better in person than I do on film, which is bad because it's how I make my living, but I am not a beauty and on balance I am glad.

It's only because I feel like such a philistine spending all that time in hair and makeup that I started to knit. I used to spend that time studying Italian and French. Then after I had two kids, my brain turned to mush and I took up knitting.