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.

Everyone knows in the industry that when these great roles come up, every two years, there's a huge number of people up for them. I'm not one of those top five females that can personally finance any film.

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.

There's still a bit of a problem, in that so many leading English roles are taken by American or French actresses.

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.

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.

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