I cry at the end of every episode of "Girls." I'm just so overwhelmed by the truthfulness with which [Lena Dunham] conveys human nature.

I think good things come out of having tension with the people that you work with. You've got to be arguing in order to produce something interesting. If everyone's just agreeing with each other, you're not going to push the boundaries.

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.

The American vice would be sometimes speaking too loudly. You can always hear American people on the trains!

I always had a very strong sense of independence.

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.

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."