Every woman feels she is too old and has missed the boat.

So many roles for women demand that you make the audience fall in love with you or sympathise with you.

The gym is where I get my chill-out time. I try to go six days a week, but when I'm working, that goes down to about three.

For me, compatibility is a sense of humour, being able to laugh together; that is very important.

I'm sure people in the business have said: She's too old for that part. I don't hear about it because your agent protects you from those negative things.

The girl-next-door image is a sort of joke; for years, I couldnt get any roles other than as somebody dark.

Every time we moved on, I joined a different class in a different school with different girls until, aged 13, my father had taken the decision to pull me out of school altogether. Everything I needed, he reasoned, could be found within the rich language of Shakespeare's plays at which, by then, I was something of an old hand.