I'd describe myself as a Christian who doesn't believe in God.

I have no maternal instinct whatsoever. Motherhood holds no interest for me.

Parkinson's is a slow but inevitable process. It's hard living with it on a daily basis. The difficulty facing people with it is that they never quite know 'Can I or can't I do this today?'

As an actor, those are the roles that you long for. You always want something that's going to kick your last role out of the water and put you off on a new path.

A war film can be propaganda and they're very valuable as propaganda, as we realized in Britain in the Second World War. Film as propaganda is a very valuable tool. It can also demonize, which is the dangerous side of a war film as propaganda. But there are war films that are not propaganda. It's just saying 'This is what it's like.' For 99 percent of us we don't know what it's like. We have no idea. So to reveal that to the audience is powerful.

I was never that kind of star. I was never cast because I was gorgeous.

All you have to do is to look like crap on film and everyone thinks you're a brilliant actress. Actually, all you've done is look like crap.