In the movie, you're moving, you have personality, you don't have to be great looking.

It's all about perfection, isn't it?

I love costume dramas, I love performing in them, because in a funny kind of way, you feel more free. You know about the period, you can read the books, you can see the paintings, but you've never actually going to know what it was like. You can kind of stretch those boundaries a bit.

I've always gravitated towards people who are extreme. Whether its drugs, or kicking down doors. Normally, the people in my life had to escape to get back.

At this particular time, I probably am more comfortable with myself. Just now I'm having a lovely time.

I worked with John Maybury on The Jacket and I think he's an extraordinary film-maker. I read the first drafts of this piece when I was working on The Jacket, and we'd so fallen in love with him that we thought he was the only person that should direct this! We wrote poems for him, we sent him champagne and cakes. Four years later he finally read it.

It's good to know that other people think differently, and that's what makes the characters interesting.