Southend is a dormitory town for London. But it also had this thing of being the playground of the East End - a glamorous holiday town.

I believe in meditation - it's a good tool to centre yourself, but unfortunately, I'm too lazy to do it. It's very hard work, and I prefer to watch 'Nothing To Declare' on TV!

I think still it is very fine not to want children. There are far too many people in the world. It is my contribution to ecology.

I always tell my husband, 'That's it, I quit, I've done all I wanted,' and he's just like, 'Yeah, yeah. Sure.'

Writers can get very angry when an actor says, "I don't know, I don't feel very comfortable with this line." Sometimes though, you're working with a writer for whom that is simply not apt - like Harold Pinter.

I am for peace and all kinds of ways because the total reality is that you never quite, at least in my experience, you never quite get to be peaceful in the profession that we have all chosen. It's a constant yearning, a constant reaching out for the unreachable. And so you never quite find peace within yourself. You are always questioning yourself and challenging yourself and feeling that you would fall short.

Being powerful is so much more interesting than being beautiful.