It is true that there are few plays of Shakespeare that I haven't done.

I played Iris Murdoch, who had not long died, and I felt the responsibility very heavy on my shoulders.

I don`t like reading scripts very much. I like it better for someone to just explain to me what it is about this story.

I don't think anybody can be told how to act. I think you can give advice. But you have to find your own way through it.

There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it.

I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.

We know about the issue of children being sold and adopted and taken away but what is so extraordinary is how these two people come through something like - how both of them do, in actual fact. I think that she's one of the most considerable people I've ever met, Philomena.