I resent having witnessed the survival of some very mediocre male actors and the professional demise of the very brilliant female ones.

It's very easy to just shout: 'Off with their heads!' Maybe in doing that you might lose something very valuable. I would like to see the monarchy continue, but in a more democratic fashion.

There is that awful moment when you realize that you're falling in love. That should be the most joyful moment, and actually it's not. It's always a moment that's full of fear because you know, as night follows day, the joy is going to rapidly be followed by some pain or other. All the angst of a relationship.

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

What I feel personally and what I can act are two different things. Maybe one of the great pleasures of my job is being able to inhabit worlds that you are never going to inhabit personally.

I think of myself as Mirren rather than Mironova, absolutely. I am a Brit, really. I mean when I go to Russia and I do have, maybe it's a romantic fantasy. You know us actors, we're very good at romantic fantasies.

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.