I always find it much easier when there's one person whose vision you're following, as opposed to many people.

In film as a medium, you're often given a baddie and a goodie and told what to think about them; it's usually a very definite point of view.

Everybody can take a good picture. Everybody is interesting. Everyone has an interesting face. Some people are more difficult or more nervous or more tired. When you do a movie, you have action, you're talking, you're moving. You don't see the camera. Taking a picture with a photographer, you don't talk, it's more difficult than in a movie for your body to relax, to be yourself.

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.

My upbringing is why I am the person I am today. I have very wise parents.

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.

The highest percentage of England's top jobs are filled by graduates from about two different universities.