Seeing The English Patient is wonderfully draining, but imagine acting in it for six months.

The problem with being a film actress or a movie star is that people see you so huge that somehow you're visually massive or somehow you're in some removed space, which is a television or wherever. It somehow takes your humanity.

I think people do work too much. I've never been able to understand the whole 'make hay while the sun shines' thing. Either I want to work or I don't want to work.

I'm not used to being asked what I want to talk about. That's why I'm an actress. Get told what to do, stand on the mark, say your words, wear this, look this way, look that way.

I'm a bit of a Doubting Thomas - always worrying about things.

I tend to do things that I'm very frightened of. That's what I do.

I do a film because I like the story and I want to give life to a character - I don't necessarily have to agree with the director.