I wouldn't miss the fame. I don't go out hunting for it. I try to avoid it and to slip into the background wherever I go.

After playing Saffy in 'Ab Fab', I needed to take time out from acting to see if I really wanted to do it. I had been doing it for a very long time and I was being sent the same sort of scripts again and again.

I don't get inoculations or take anti-malaria tablets when I go abroad, I take the homeopathic alternative, called 'nosodes', and I'm the only one who never goes down with anything.

I just love doing costume dramas; I am very lucky, as I see myself as a part-time time traveller.

I think it's healthy to be insecure, to have nerves.

It distresses me when I take my seven-year-old nephew out. I cook healthy food, and he wants to go to McDonald's. He doesn't even like the food; he just wants the toys, the Happy Meals. I can't stand to see people walking down the street eating fast food.

It's very hard to dramatise something factual and not make it look overdone, but also not to make it look so under-dramatised that it's dull.