Sometimes I go, “What am I doing with my life?” But then I get letters from young women, or people come up to me, and they say, “You’ve made such a difference to my confidence.” And that is a good thing. I should read more fan mail though. I’m crap at responding.

I was a mixture of being incredibly old for my age and incredibly backwards. I was born quite old, but then I stopped growing. I lived with my mum and dad till I was 30.

When it comes to acting, people talk about the suspension of disbelief that you ask of the audience. Before that starts, you have to, as an actor, suspend your own disbelief.

When you write for very young children what they want is something familiar and safe and stereotyped.

When you're up for an Oscar, you just get offered everything. It's fantastic, but a lot of it you're completely inappropriate for.

I'm a very good sleeper.

You become very angry and depressed that you keep getting offered only these exceedingly demure and repressed roles. They're so not me. That's why films like Fight Club were so important to me because I think I confounded certain stereotypes and limited perceptions of what I could do as an actress.