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."

I like to keep pushing myself and trying things out. I get easily bored, so I need a challenge.

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.

"The Invisible Woman" was about trying to show this conflict in [Nelly Ternan] woman truthfully, between her own identity, but also being in love with someone who I think made very high demands from her.

I think that when [Charles] Dickens met Nelly [Ternan] it unleashed this sort of carnal, anarchic, cruel energy within him, and literally after she met him he changed his whole life - he separated from [his wife] Catherine, he stopped all the children from seeing her and went on this bitter rampage.

You have to be brave and not always play likeable people. It's difficult, because there's a demand for the hero or heroine to be very likeable.

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