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

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.

I hope to start enjoying flirting again when I'm 70, like my mother did.

I did try fillers once. Don't ever have fillers because when your cheekbones are high, it's chipmunk time.

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.

I don't think, until you've actually lost somebody you really love, that you can go through that door that allows you to be grown-up.

I do still get the odd fan letter about The Good Life, clearly written by somebody aged 18, who says: Will you send a photograph? And I think: Maybe it's kinder not to. I'm deeply into my 50s now.