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.

I couldn't do what I do without my friends and family.

"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 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 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.

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

I think [Charles] Dickens was an extrovert and Nelly [Ternan] an introvert, and I think that Nelly saw beyond the fame and adulation and she actually loved Dickens essentially for who he was. So I think he felt like she was someone he could be himself with.