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

The highest pay cheque my mother ever received funded the building of a nursery school in Shepherd's Bush - the school cost well over three times the money she donated to the making of the film 'The Palestinian.' Unsurprisingly this always goes unmentioned in the press.

I care so much less, now, about going up the ladder; if I cared about the ladder I would be doing it all very wrong.

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.

You grow up by making mistakes. I've made a ton of them, but as long as I keep on failing better, I don't mind.

It's very difficult when there are pictures taken on the red carpet. I find those things so terrifying that another persona just kicks in. I don't recognise myself.

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