I suffered from 'No one will ever fancy me!' syndrome, well into my teens. Even now I do not consider myself to be some kind of great, sexy beauty. Absolutely not.

Mum and dad were very much friends, and up to life. There was no anxiety for anything when I was growing up, they just taught me to be me.

People say to me, 'You seem to have made this conscious decision to do independent films'. In reality, I haven't. After each movie, I always think, 'how different can I possibly be? Is this going to challenge me, is this going to inspire me, and is this going to make me love my job more than I already do?'

Just because society, and government, and whatever was different 100 years ago, doesn't mean that people didn't have sex, pick their nose, or swear.

Every woman has a mother, and every woman will have an issue with that mother and things that mother did or didn't do. It just depends on how you choose to process the lessons that you learned from your own mother.

There's not an awful lot that embarrasses me. I'm the kind of actress that absolutely believes in exposing myself.

There wasn't very much time between wrapping Revolutionary Road and starting The Reader. It was about five and a half months, which, for me, isn't that long. Some actors are very good at just going from one thing to another but I've always been a bit useless at that. The preparation time is important for me.