"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.

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

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

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.

I've never taken a role where I don't like a person on the page. Sometimes there are changes that need to be made.

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.

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.