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.

And whatever my weight, I've always been skinny from the waist up.

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

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.

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

To newspapers and publishing houses I urge the use of fact over fiction, freedom of the press, and responsibility at all times.