I think work really is a life saver, because it carries you forward, which is good.

So finally, I can feel a sort of pride in all my family - Mum, Lynn, Corin, Tasha, my cousin Gemma - because, I think how wonderful that this troop of gypsies can carry on telling stories.

OK, I wasn't as successful as, say, Julia Roberts, but I'd spent years in a very respectable career, some big American films but a host of other smaller, really exciting, maybe experimental films, being paid rubbish but working with fine people, that was what I thought I was known for.

My mother, for the last 20 years anyway, would not call herself a Marxist but a human rights activist.

The early part of my career I really struggled, getting turned down again and again. I was in debt, and it was horrible. And then my family hit such highs in their careers, I asked myself what I was thinking going into the same profession.

I live quite an unsettled life.

Seize the day. Well, I aspire to that anyway.