I have endless playlists on my iPod so will throw on, say, Bruce Springsteen or The Smiths, depending on what kind of day I'm going to have.

Ever since I was young, I've read Austen and the Brontes. My friends laugh, but those books are always so tragic and wonderful - those stories, they're just incredible.

What I really learned from Tim Burton is that it's important to have your own person in a role because you can't play a character unless there are elements of human behaviour that you yourself understand. I was really struck by how Tim Burton would like to sit and chat about you... or question things which then you had never thought about. It is a good thing to always step back a bit with things like that. But I try my damned hardest to learn something from everything I do.

I am a hopeless romantic.

I filmed 'Albatross' before I got 'Downton.' It's a coming-of-age movie about this girl who leaps into this family's life, like a whirlwind. She's ballsy and brash and wonderful, it was such an amazing character to play.

When you get a bit older and you realise that no one knows what they're doing, no one's perfect and it's fine.

I've been told I make a very good brew.