I think Nelly [Ternan] actually has something very conservative about her, and she's very judgmental of (this other character's) situation, and can see that's about to happen to herself. So she judges it even more harshly [because] it's what she fears becoming.

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.

It's nice to have some continuity you can come back to. I feel that in coming home, coming back to London.

We live in a time where it's more surprising if people are actually together than if they're having affairs.

I always had a very strong sense of independence.

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."

I've always been a feminist, and what I love in my work is being able to explore a full-sided woman and not patronize her.