It wasn't being an alcoholic - it was going wild. It happened when I got famous. It was like having my teens in my early thirties: blotting out your life, not having to think about anything.

I do find it therapeutic, writing about stuff that was frightening and painful as a child, and managing to see it from an adult's point of view. To get it out of the closet onto paper, metaphorically speaking, is therapeutic.

In order to be creative you have to be allowed to fail.

I keep seeing myself in my daughter, and I see my mother in me and in her. Bloody hell.

Suddenly, you are very much in the present, and you learn it's really the place where you should always live.

I'll tell you how it happened. The phone rang. Paul, my agent, goes, 'Would you like to play Meryl Streep's?' I said, 'Yeeees! I'll do it, whatever it is.' He said, 'It's Mamma Mia!.' I said, 'Oh no, which character? The fat friend?

It's getting better generally, daily, especially in TV, for women in acting and age and looks count less. As more women come into the business. Change of any sort takes a long time to happen.