When I'm choosing projects to be a part of it's always a combination of so many different things. The primary thing is the director. But a very important element is, is it different enough from anything else I've ever done, or what I've last done.

Women are always self-effacing and self-denying. There's a term that enrages me, and I always used to swear that I'd never play characters described that way. The term is "long-suffering."

I'm a naturist at heart. I love being on beaches where everyone is naked. Ugly young people, beautiful old people, whatever. It's so unsexual and so liberating.

I've been working every year since I started acting, and I got many awards before I won the Oscar for 'The Queen.'

It has nothing to do with clothing or makeup. Just put your shoulders back and chin up, and face the world with pride.

I think every woman in our culture is a feminist. They may refuse to articulate it, but if you were to take any woman back 40 years and say, 'Is this a world you want to live in?' They would say, 'No.'

There isn't a King Lear for women, or a Henry V, or a Richard III. You reach a level where you can handle that stuff technically and mentally, and it's not there.