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.

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.

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.

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.

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.