I'm keen to have balance, as much as possible. I put every ounce of myself into my work, but also it's important that I don't miss every single wedding of my best friends. I couldn't do what I do without my friends and family.

The British vice is overthinking before we speak, which is really annoying. I love the way that, in America, people are more straightforward. The American vice would be sometimes speaking too loudly. You can always hear American people on the trains!

I've never taken a role where I don't like a person on the page. Sometimes there are changes that need to be made.

The key is working with great directors. A film is so many different people and all their talents, but particularly the directors, because of the idiosyncrasies of that person.

I was a tomboy running around in the garden. I used to play on a local cricket team. I grew up with all boy cousins, for the most part, and my brother. My mother was in the kind of late-sixties, early-seventies origins of female emancipation. And she was very much like, "You're not going to be defined by how you look. It's going to be about who you are and what you do."

It can be very intense being an actor; it can be quite a small world. Then you speak to your friend who is a scientist and they have a completely different perspective.

I was into Virginia Woolf and James Joyce [at university] and I think we all thought that [Charles] Dickens wasn't that cool.