When I'm acting, I'm in the director's hands. I'm very happy to be. I like to be focused on what I'm doing.

I looked at the 1950 animated film [Cinderella], I read a couple of editions of the fairy tale that I have in my house and all of it seemed to say that there was room for a version that delivered, in this story, which seems to invite a feeling in people and I think that is some version of a classical world.

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be.

With people in corsets you need, an hour and a half in you have to give somebody something, you have to have those trays with a little bit of fruit going around or something because you get that blood sugar [dropping] thing, so it's curious because that's in your mind at the same time as you're about to say, 'I think it's about the humanity and the depth of feeling and we need to feel [Cinderella] soul expand and by the way, more cheese for the people in the back.'

Variety is very, very good. Going from medium to medium, if you get the chance to do it, from theater to television to film, which are all distinctly different, keeps me sharp.

I come from the theatre, my bones are in the theatre; it’s as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre

If it's good art, it's good.