"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.

It can be very intense being an actor; it can be quite a small world. Then you speak to your friend who is a scientist and they have a completely different perspective.

I'm keen to have balance, as much as possible. I put every ounce of myself into my work, but also it's important that I don't miss every single wedding of my best friends. I couldn't do what I do without my friends and family.

I'm too much left brain. I very much have an emotional response to things; I love literature and films and storytelling. I need to nourish my right side, it doesn't get a lot of exercise.

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

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 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.