I was 17, and all I wanted to do was to get away from England and the awful, boring boarding schools I'd been going to there. The last one was taught by monks, and I couldn't wait to get out.

I've done quite a lot of dying on shows and in movies. To have a good death scene though - come on, it's brilliant. I love a good death scene!

I like the adrenaline of live performance, whatever that is, appearing in front of an audience of any kind, whether it's one or a hundred or a thousand. It gives you a buzz of adrenaline, its exciting. The thing about that is that you want to make those nerves work for you in terms of an energy that's appropriate for the part and the performance, and not to distract the people who are watching so that they become nervous for you.

It's important to keep auditioning. If you're auditioning for something, you're auditioning for a role that people can't see you in and you need to convince them that you're the right person.

When you're at drama school you spend so much time working on amazing texts and analyzing them, digging into them, and figuring out why it happens, why you are being asked to say what you're saying, and what the words mean. But then when you start working, most of the stuff would just fall apart if you subject it to that kind of scrutiny.

Marriages had different meanings back then than they do now, they were used to cement agreements between families, business deals and things like that. The idea of marriages being arranged for love is some sort of modern idea, really.

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.