I think a lot of my work has been a weird attempt to liberate myself, but it's not altogether successful.

I think of myself as being a bit of a wimp deep down - a bourgeois wimp - and I'm fighting that. I think all Brits are, maybe.

I don't think it's good to try and change anyone. The trick and the mystery - of relationships and life in general - is to learn to live with the bits you don't like.

I became an actress because I discovered the world of the imagination when I was about 14 or so and the concept that you could engage in this amazing world of storytelling. I saw a production of Hamlet, and I didn't know Hamlet died in the end.

The important thing is to bring people with Parkinson's into our world and for the public to have a real understanding of it, as they've beginning to have with autism.

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.

There's nothing sexy about doing a nude scene. It's rather uncomfortable. I like dressing up rather than dressing down.