The whole point for me is to change as much as possible. If I've done one movie, I've done that, move on.

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.

I don't want to deny my femininity. But would I want to be a stay-at-home mother? No. On the other hand, you should be allowed to do that, as should men, without being sneered at.

The thing about great fictional characters from literature, and the reason that they're constantly turned into characters in movies, is that they completely speak to what makes people human. They're full of flaws as much as they are full of heroics. I think the reason that people love them and hate them so much is because, in some way, they always see a mirror of themselves in them, and you can always understand them on some level. Sometimes it's a terrifyingly dark mirror that's held up.

You have to learn the rules to be able to know how to break them.

I don't quite understand what Tolstoy's actual personal view of Anna is - whether he likes her or hates her, whether she's the heroine or the antiheroine.

And we're fortunate if we have parents who are great and loving and inspiring. But, unfortunately, there are people who don't have that.