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'm attracted to playing people who aren't necessarily straightforward.

But for everyone, I think, there is always a pressure to conform, and I guess as you get older you realize it's less interesting to do that. It starts with you, though, saying, 'I know what I like doing and that's what I'm going to do.

It was lucky that Ralph [Fiennes] is someone who understands both film and theater and we were able to understand that scene so well before we took it to the set.

I've done quite a lot of improv work before, and I wanted to do this film ["The Invisible Woman"] because it felt like a different technique. We were very true to the lines, and there was something quite formal and almost theatrical about it.

In my work I fight for, I hope, showing women in a true way. They've got brains.

Most of the time I was in the background. I never played [the Virgin] Mary. I was always kind of the third angel.