After 'The Real Thing,' I thought about giving up acting because it's difficult to have a rich life outside your work when you're an actress, a private life that can survive being picked up and put down. That's what I thought, anyway.

People used to always ask, and I would say I wanted to be an actress. When they would ask why, I would say because my mother has so much fun.

I distanced myself, relatively, from my parents for a year or so in my late twenties. It was necessary for me to feel my autonomy. Other than that brief gap, we have always been a very close family.

My natural accent is American. I chose to speak with a U.K. accent when I was about to enter the final year at drama school in London. I was going to try to find a way to stay in the U.K. after I finished college and could not imagine trying to live and get work there with an American accent.

You know what else I've learnt? That it's all right not to ride the crest of the wave. Every time a wave comes along I retreat, and I haven't come to any harm yet.

So much of my life is not about work and that is usually mainly what I do tweet about. We live a very quiet life.

I don't mind being an only child; never have. I am lucky, though, that I have my friend Emily, who grew-up very close to me and so, there is someone I have shared memories with. I would miss that if I didn't have it, I think.